Baldwin & Co. Ideas Explored

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:23:18
Speaker 1
I do think there is some tension between the commercialization of culture and the kind of authenticity of culture. If I was to make a second round of predictions, only this time a prediction about Austin, Nashville and New Orleans, I would say New Orleans will be the most distinctive. 25 and 30 years from now. Those two cities are much greater risk of losing their authenticity and distinction.

00:00:23:22 - 00:00:48:26
Speaker 2
I have a lot of faith in the resilience that's being built in communities across America through art, music, food, fellowship, and the ability for people to build resilience. Now we're at each other's throats on the national level, but I have thousands of examples of people on the local level, meaning that in your house, in your neighborhood, at the church, at the synagogue, at the mosque, at the restaurant where people were at the playground, you know what?

00:00:48:26 - 00:01:01:01
Speaker 2
People are doing things in ways that build social cohesion. That should allow us to find a pathway back to common ground. I think we're going to have to notice that we're in a unique space.

00:01:01:03 - 00:01:24:24
Speaker 3
He's been named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine, journalist, podcaster and author of five New York Times best selling books. In his gripping new book, Talking to Strangers What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know. Malcolm puts forth the theory that too often we make dramatic, often dangerous assumptions about people we don't know.

00:01:24:29 - 00:01:46:22
Speaker 2
Mitch Landrieu, his new book, is In the Shadow of Statues A White Southerner Confronts history. The president thinks that governing in chaos is a great strategy, right? I don't think the rest of America thinks that it's a great threat. I think that we are in one of the most dangerous 4 or 5 dangerous moments in American history, because there is a sense that autocracy is more important than democracy.

00:01:46:23 - 00:01:49:02
Speaker 1
Isn't this a famous thing that Ben Franklin says?

00:01:49:02 - 00:01:55:18
Speaker 2
Yeah. He said, you have a republic if you can keep it. How do you navigate from where we are to where we need to be? Because we don't want to end ourselves.

00:01:56:11 - 00:02:02:19
Speaker 1
My name's Martin Glover. I'm a writer, podcaster. Thrilled to be here in New Orleans.

00:02:02:21 - 00:02:09:00
Speaker 2
I'm Mitch Landrieu. I'm the ex-mayor of New Orleans and the governor and father of five beautiful kids.

00:02:09:02 - 00:02:14:12
Speaker 1
I forgot to, I should say, I'm a father of two beautiful kids. How did you get the five?

00:02:14:15 - 00:02:22:23
Speaker 2
My wife. I thought know because you couldn't keep my hands off of me, but that she doesn't remember it that way.

00:02:22:25 - 00:02:24:05
Speaker 1
Five is an impressive number.

00:02:24:06 - 00:02:29:09
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome to New Orleans. Thank you for being here. Many times you grace us with your presence.

00:02:29:13 - 00:02:41:06
Speaker 1
I come here, I have a one of my best friends lives here. I've been coming here on a regular basis for probably once or twice a year. For 15 or more years, maybe. Maybe even 20 years.

00:02:41:09 - 00:02:48:12
Speaker 2
So I know I was going to say, you're going to kick this off, but that takes us to a good place. Why? Why do you keep coming back to New Orleans?

00:02:48:15 - 00:03:08:26
Speaker 1
Well, I have like I said, I have this friend here, so I have that excuse, but I would come anyway, I think even if I didn't have a friend here, you know, it's, because it's such a, you know, there's that joke they have about Miami. Why do, South Americans like Miami so much? Because it's so close to the States.

00:03:08:28 - 00:03:30:18
Speaker 1
And but it's more true of New Orleans is true of like that. The point of that comment is it Miami is, is an atypical American city. It feels like something else. But New Orleans is even more atypical. It's one of the very few North American cities that, is distinctive, right? And I think there's a very short list.

00:03:30:21 - 00:03:48:09
Speaker 1
Montreal. New Orleans. A little bit of Miami. And then New York is, of course, that's of the standard, but these are special places. And there's something there's something about distinction. I think that is what draws people back.

00:03:48:09 - 00:04:05:03
Speaker 2
Yeah. It's a you know, I've tried to explain to people as I've traveled around the world and I've been to many places, and many places are wonderful and gorgeous. I've been to when I went, when I went into Havana, I, when I went into Quebec and the old city of Quebec, you felt New Orleans a little bit and.

00:04:05:06 - 00:04:19:23
Speaker 2
From time to time I've said to people who get busy in their life and they're not paying attention to what they're saying or what they hearing or what they know, but they're feeling something different. The truth. Cuts across space and time.

00:04:20:27 - 00:04:50:13
Speaker 2
Things that we learned thousands of years ago actually or relevant today. And, and you think well where did that truth come from. Well it maybe it came from Socrates or maybe it came from the early Roman Empire. Or maybe it came from Africa, maybe it came from an indigenous people. But of course, as time you can see it written in, in, in poetry or in philosophers or thinkers, but then it's present today and it somehow finds itself in places that hold because it never really ever goes away.

00:04:50:13 - 00:05:06:24
Speaker 2
And when you have old cities, particularly in this, I'm sure this is true of rural areas as well. You just you find that thing and it's just always really there. Yeah. You know, so in New York which of course, you know, professes to be the most diverse place and all the places in the Midwest are, it is diverse.

00:05:06:24 - 00:05:23:22
Speaker 2
But it's a, it's a different thing here. And you can actually feel it. It's, it's in some ways indescribable. It just kind of you can feel the ethos of it. It's like the soul maybe is a better way to say it, but it is, it is very unique. Yeah. And different from any other place that you go in America.

00:05:23:22 - 00:05:32:10
Speaker 2
But lots of people tell me that I don't know what it is about New Orleans, but it's just something that draws me there and it's. And I would just call it very soulful.

00:05:32:18 - 00:05:55:04
Speaker 1
Yeah. There's a I remember reading a comment in a, a little section of a, of a book, by Ezra Klein, and he was talking about how 100 years ago, if you asked Americans to identify where they were from, they would name their town and then secondarily, they would name their state, and then they would finally say, I'm American.

00:05:55:06 - 00:06:14:21
Speaker 1
And his what? One of his arguments was, if you ask that as over time, as we get closer and closer to present day, people have been identifying less and less with their town and more and more with their country. Correct. That so Robert Lee would famously say, I am a Virginian and he was a Virginian way before he was an American.

00:06:14:21 - 00:06:20:09
Speaker 1
That was his point of identification. And, nor is he is the exception to that.

00:06:20:10 - 00:06:42:21
Speaker 2
You will not. That's a I was going to say that you will not if you go anywhere. Governor Ron, Buddy Romney used to be the governor of Louisiana from 1988 to 92. It was previous to getting elected governor, congressman, and his parents were from a place called Shreveport, which were people who were geographically challenged. Is in the north, the upper boot of Louisiana.

00:06:42:24 - 00:07:01:25
Speaker 2
They almost consider themselves more closely aligned with Texas, because there's an invisible line in Louisiana that is divided into Protestants and then a very heavily Catholic population. But it's always been diverse. When he was the governor, he used to tell this story that that he would travel the world and people would ask him, well, where are you the governor of?

00:07:01:25 - 00:07:20:24
Speaker 2
And he would say, Louisiana. And they would have this perplexed, you know. On, on their face. And he would go New Orleans and they would go, oh yeah, we know where that is. Yeah. And New Orleanians do it is a it takes you into a larger issue, which is that the sense of place that people have.

00:07:20:27 - 00:07:31:29
Speaker 2
People always ask, when I was mayor of New Orleans, they would say, well, what makes New Orleans special? You know, how can we have music and how can we have culture and how can we have art? And how can we have all that joy of life? And I said, well, you can't have the joy without the pain.

00:07:32:01 - 00:07:55:23
Speaker 2
They, they lived together shoulder to shoulder in New Orleans. But the truth is especially it relates to art, music and culture. Every place has art music and culture because human beings I believe are intuitively creative. And there is something special about every place the colors, the textures, the tones. If people, people would lean into it. But you have to nurture it just like anything else.

00:07:55:23 - 00:08:13:25
Speaker 2
It doesn't grow on its own. You have to plant the seed. You have to water the soil. You have to let the plants grow. You have to care for them. You'll notice in New Orleans, if you talk to some musicians here, they're always carrying along somebody in the family, the next generation or the next generation. Because they know that you can't.

00:08:13:28 - 00:08:27:01
Speaker 2
You can't grow it if you don't seed it. And that's I don't know if it's just unique to New Orleans, but I know that that is a way of, of of continuing on both good and bad things in generations to come.

00:08:27:03 - 00:09:02:08
Speaker 1
Yeah. It's also a reminder. You know, I remember once years ago I gave a talk and it was about Nashville, Albany was the third city. It was about if you would, if you had 50 years ago. Oh. And Austin. Right. Austin. Nashville and Albany, New York, if 50 or 60 years ago, I sat down and said, which of those three cities is going to be dominant in the year 2025, 100%, you would have said.

00:09:02:08 - 00:09:03:08
Speaker 2
Albany, right?

00:09:03:10 - 00:09:20:23
Speaker 1
Correct. Because it had all the obvious advantages in the wealthiest state. It had some great schools. It had it had natural beauty. The Adirondacks right there. It was close to New York City. It was a capital. It was. I could go on and on. All right. All those three states, all those cities are capitals of their particular state.

00:09:20:26 - 00:09:42:01
Speaker 1
But Albany had all the natural advantages. Today, Albany is, of course. I mean, people don't even talk about opening night and Nashville and Austin have become. And the question is why? And I think the reason we would have made that mistake 60 years ago is that we consistently underrate the importance of culture and overrate the importance of kind of material advantages.

00:09:42:04 - 00:10:09:18
Speaker 1
IBM, the dominant electronics company in the world in the 60 years ago, was headquartered. We had all these plants, like just down the road in Albany, and we got fixated on that. Oh, IBM's there, right. They got to be going places and we forgot. No, no, no, it's this inner it's this indefinable spirit thing that matters. The reason people started going to Nashville and Austin is that they had music, and they had they had something.

00:10:09:18 - 00:10:14:20
Speaker 1
There was something in the water that made them special. And that's that's the story of New Orleans.

00:10:14:23 - 00:10:41:28
Speaker 2
Well, Nashville also proved the both of them, which which we have a little bit of a chip on our shoulder about because the origins of if you talk to any of the major bands that made their way in the 60s, 70s and 80s, they would always say, we got it from the South. Yeah, the blues in Mississippi, jazz in New Orleans, all of the great singers.

00:10:42:00 - 00:11:10:01
Speaker 2
We'll say I really kind of got my vibe in there. But one of the things New Orleans never did successfully was to monetize music. And so both Austin and Nashville have now figured out a way. Yeah, to protect the intellectual capital and the business side of art music. When I was a lieutenant governor, I conceptualized a term called the Cultural Economy Summit, which was just designed to tell people that that you can actually make money off of culture.

00:11:10:03 - 00:11:31:16
Speaker 2
But there's a natural I think that some people think there's a natural contradiction between, well, how commercial do you want to be and how real will the art be? And I think it's almost a false contradiction. And the bigger the bigger point to all of it, whether you're making money off of it or not, is that culture and art and music are an essential part of human expression, I think.

00:11:31:19 - 00:11:59:29
Speaker 2
And I always like to and I believe this to be true, that in even especially in times of turbulence, especially in times of trouble that we're in now, Chris, you saw this back in the 60s, and then you saw back during the civil rights movement, the slide back further post, the end of slavery is that, if you want to hear the truth, you have to listen to the artists and the poets and, and and, even when rap music came out, a lot of people were like, oh, that's not really good music.

00:11:59:29 - 00:12:26:20
Speaker 2
So we're. No, you're not listening to the street. You're not listening. It's just an art form that's communicating. When people are really feeling in their gut. You go back to the 60s and you think about all the musicians that were writing about, you know, the post, Vietnam era, you know, even he in The animals the other day, I was reading about a story about the lead singer, the animals, you know, singing, We Got to Get Out of This place, which was a favorite tune of all of the folks that were fighting in Vietnam.

00:12:26:22 - 00:12:48:17
Speaker 2
And that was the mantra, you know, and there's a way that that does that. And if you don't have that, you don't really have the part of your soul that you need to kind of to kind of think about, because it's the only time that you really think about stuff, which is, I guess, is one of the things that we're losing an ability for people to have conversations that are hard in a way that doesn't destroy relationships.

00:12:48:17 - 00:13:05:24
Speaker 2
And we're in that moment now in the country over lost our ability, you know, to do that, or at least even have a long, thoughtful conversation, much less, you know, a cordial conversation. I find this when I'm on TV, they ask you a question and they say in 30s, tell me, what's the solution to the problems in the world?

00:13:05:27 - 00:13:18:26
Speaker 2
And you can't really have a penetrating conversation that challenges both people to listen, to hear, and then to get to a better place for both of us. Yeah, I think that we don't we don't allow enough space and time for that.

00:13:18:28 - 00:13:52:12
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the best I mean, you said and very, very, very gently disagree. I do think, I do think there is some tension between the commercialization of culture and the kind of authenticity of culture. And if I was to make a second round of predictions, only this time a prediction about Austin, Nashville and New Orleans, I would say New Orleans will be will be the most distinctive 25 and 30 years from now.

00:13:52:12 - 00:14:16:20
Speaker 1
I agree with that, that if those two cities are much greater risk of losing their authenticity and distinction. And that's because if you go to Austin or you Nashville, you know, you see it, right? You see like the explosion of the last couple of years, the, the I don't want to use the word dilution, but something happens.

00:14:16:22 - 00:14:28:25
Speaker 1
You can't turn to the culture of a, of a, of a community upside down in 15 years, like I did in Austin. Yeah. And expect something to stay intact.

00:14:28:25 - 00:14:48:00
Speaker 2
Yeah. No, I didn't. First of all, I didn't mean to suggest that it was a when I said it was a false choice. I didn't mean to suggest that it's the only choice. There is something about the purity of culture. Yeah. That that can't, can't be replaced. But there is a there is an interesting thing. I grew up in the theater.

00:14:48:03 - 00:14:51:25
Speaker 2
I was a theater major. I really wanted to be a professional actor. I didn't.

00:14:51:25 - 00:14:52:21
Speaker 1
Perfect training.

00:14:52:21 - 00:15:10:26
Speaker 2
For who I was, what, what it is, actually, it's. I mean, the art forms are the same. Reading and writing, understanding how to use language, how to remember stuff, how to speak. There are many of the same things, but the idea that if you're an actor, you're somehow false, as opposed to stripping down what your personality is so you can authentically live in a character.

00:15:11:00 - 00:15:29:27
Speaker 2
A is a different thing. But, what I mean is there are people who are like, this is my art, and I don't care who buys it, and if I can't sell it, then I can't do it. There's always this incredible tension about how to actually make a living doing the thing that I love, and that tension will always be there.

00:15:29:27 - 00:15:48:23
Speaker 2
And it is absolutely certain that that commercial success sometimes dilutes the purity of the art, and that that tension has been with us forever. And, and those cities basically say they're the music capital of the world. New Orleans would respectfully disagree. Yeah, well, and we're happy that they have it and we don't begrudge them for.

00:15:48:23 - 00:16:09:11
Speaker 1
It, which there's also a big difference between a music led culture and the New Orleans culture and can be and telling you, you know, you know better than me. But yeah, food is a very different animal than music that we London together sometimes. But the thing about food is it is it is of necessity local. It doesn't travel.

00:16:09:14 - 00:16:23:10
Speaker 1
So when you open a restaurant you commit to that, not just to the city. You commit to the corner that you're on. Right. This bookstore here is a commitment to the to the that's right to the block that we're you were talking about earlier.

00:16:23:12 - 00:16:23:26
Speaker 2
That's right.

00:16:24:02 - 00:16:37:20
Speaker 1
Whereas if you're a musician, you travel. So it's a very different cultural dynamic. And and I would my sense of New Orleans has always been it's as much about food as it is about music. And it's the food part that that is the source of the distinction, I think.

00:16:37:20 - 00:16:56:09
Speaker 2
Well, to us that's certainly true. But the thing they have in common is both our music and our food as a result of a very, special idea about democracy, I believe, and about America. And this is why I think in some ways, although we're the most unique city in America, we're also the most American in the sense that our nation's motto, E pluribus unum.

00:16:56:09 - 00:17:22:16
Speaker 2
Out of many, we are one. Our food, our famous food here is gumbo. It's made from ingredients that are from all over the world that have come to be put in a pot that celebrates, you know, all of our ancestry, whether it's from Africa or whether it's from Europe or wet. I mean, wherever it is, it's in that pot and it is it is the ingredients that make it special and unique and something that can't be replicated anywhere in the world.

00:17:22:16 - 00:17:49:12
Speaker 2
So was jazz. Jazz was created in New Orleans, right down the street, less than a mile from where we're sitting right now on Congo Square. It was created in that spot. And all of this, if Wynton Marsalis would here, he would give a much more eloquent exhortation about why jazz is a replication of democracy and the ability of different kinds of people on the stage at one time to express their own unique talents through different instruments and have it then come together in harmony.

00:17:49:17 - 00:18:07:15
Speaker 2
That's really what it is. And I think the country really, honestly needs more of it. So as you know, I worked in Washington for two years, but I'm mostly of local government. I've been all over this country and, as as pained as I am about what I believe the country's going through right now and the wrong direction that we're heading in.

00:18:07:17 - 00:18:32:17
Speaker 2
I have a lot of faith in the resilience that's being built in communities across America through art, music, food, fellowship and the ability for people to build resilience. Now we're at each other's throats on the national level, but I have thousands of examples of people on the local level meaning at in your house, in your neighborhood, at the church, at the synagogue, at the mosque, at the restaurant where people were at the playground.

00:18:32:19 - 00:18:53:23
Speaker 2
You know what? People are doing things in ways that build social cohesion. That should allow us to find a pathway back to common ground. But we have to. I don't think it's going to happen by accident. I think we're going to have to notice that we're in a unique space, and we're going to have to work our way into a better space, because I think it's all it takes work.

00:18:53:26 - 00:19:24:02
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. I was thinking, you know, that someone made this comment to me that there are only two the number of kind of, of, of collective activities in America where we all participate equally is shrinking. And we're down to sports and politics. Politics is a bad thing to have as your collective activity. But sport with us, without sports, we would be.

00:19:24:05 - 00:19:39:26
Speaker 1
I think there's a lot of truth in this poses. The other interesting element here. We talked about music, which our food sports think sports is like is like the is the last bit of glue we have. Thank God for football and basketball.

00:19:39:28 - 00:19:42:09
Speaker 2
It's interesting if you if for New Orleans.

00:19:43:29 - 00:20:08:15
Speaker 2
People know that because we have the saints and we have the pelicans and and the Superdome is really our shrine. It is it is the bowl and music jazz fest the second and essence. But after Katrina hit people remember the, the view of the Superdome where their fellow American citizens were in terrible distress and it looked like a great American city would disappear in very short order.

00:20:08:15 - 00:20:32:28
Speaker 2
That building was put back in, in place, and the Saints had a game there. It was the first time that the people of the city were black and white. Everybody was together again. Now it just so happens that we were playing the Atlantic Falcons, who are who are our football nemesis. And we won that game that night. That night in that stadium wrapped around sports and football.

00:20:33:00 - 00:20:53:19
Speaker 2
The people of New Orleans found themselves again and found the courage to say, no matter what happened, we're going to rebuild this city. The same thing happened that year with Jazz Fest that opened up at the fairgrounds, which had been really beat to death when everybody came back. And it was it was human beings being in in communion with each other, being in proximity to each other, as Bryan Stevenson likes to remind us.

00:20:53:19 - 00:21:17:03
Speaker 2
And he's so right about that, where they were able to see the whites of each other's eyes and remember our humanity first. And they got us through very, very, very difficult times. We've had occasions in this country's history, the the Revolutionary War being one of them, obviously, but civil war being the most prominent. And then other instances where it was fighting, that was the order of the day.

00:21:17:03 - 00:21:28:19
Speaker 2
And I'm really prayerful that we don't have to get back to that time before we find ourselves again, because we're in a, we're in a we're in a very tense moment right now in our country. And I think we have to think hard about that.

00:21:28:20 - 00:21:58:19
Speaker 1
I'm curious, can you be more specific? What is it? I'm not asking this in a confrontational way, but I I'm curious to know how someone is thoughtful as you define defines that particular crisis that we're in. How is it different from, you know, you're old enough to remember other troubled periods in American life? Is it how is it different from the late 60s, for example?

00:21:58:21 - 00:22:24:18
Speaker 2
Well, first of all, just for reference, temperature reference. I was born in 1960. I'm 65 years old. Yeah. So I was ten years old in 1970. So from zero, from zero in my life to ten, I have very vague recollection. Yes, of the assassination of John F Kennedy. I actually remember because I was 7 or 8 when Robert Kennedy and Doctor King were shot.

00:22:24:18 - 00:22:59:17
Speaker 2
And I have I have visuals in my mind that I must have seen on TV about the riots in 1968. I remember the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and strangely enough, my mind then quickly jumps to 1980, when I was about 19 or 20, because my father, by that time had finished being mayor, and he was secretary of Housing and Urban Development and standing on the balcony of the white House with Jimmy Carter the couple of months before the hostages came back, because we had been invited to the white House for dinner.

00:22:59:17 - 00:23:29:17
Speaker 2
And I actually I don't know how this happened. I had no idea how I was, I was only 20, and I'm standing on the balcony with the president looking out over the ellipse. And for people who remember this time, there were yellow ribbons tied on all the trees and worrying about whether the hostages were going to come back in a low point in America, I remember that, but I don't I don't recall in my adult life from the time I was 15 until today, thinking that the country was in as much trouble as we are right now.

00:23:29:17 - 00:23:52:00
Speaker 2
I think that we are in one of the most dangerous 4 or 5 dangerous moments in American history because there is a there is a sense that autocracy is more important than democracy. And I very vividly remember this when I was 20, that same time that I was at the white House, I had gone on a I was attending Catholic University of America.

00:23:52:03 - 00:24:15:29
Speaker 2
I was majoring in theater and political science. I was doing a double major. I had been selected by the school to go on a State Department sponsored trip to position on Poland, to be a part of a team that taught the top 300 Polish students about American history, American musical theater, history, and history, along with a group of British professors.

00:24:16:02 - 00:24:36:28
Speaker 2
And I remember being in Poland when, the riots were about to start and there were actually armed guards on the street. I remember that visual, and I remember them thinking, we love America. America is so free. And me thinking, I hope this never happens. I took a trip to Auschwitz and I remember standing there thinking about God.

00:24:36:29 - 00:25:00:21
Speaker 2
How in the world did this ever happen? And could this ever happen in America? I mean, can you really lose your freedom? And could we do something as awful as that or the internment? And I thought to myself, never that can ever happen in America. I find myself now many, many years later thinking, you know what? Will we better get our hubris in order that democracy can actually be lost?

00:25:00:23 - 00:25:29:02
Speaker 2
Yet autocracy is a real danger. And this idea that some people are better than others because of their race, or the creed of the color of their religion and oppression that never ends well. And there are there are lots of examples from the Rise and Fall of Rome and other examples about how republics of democracies never existed. And they all died because of hubris, and they all died because people didn't take care to be careful with and with the thing that was left us.

00:25:29:02 - 00:25:32:15
Speaker 1
What's it didn't? Isn't this a famous thing that Ben Franklin says? Yeah.

00:25:32:15 - 00:25:34:01
Speaker 2
He said, you have a republic. If you can keep.

00:25:34:01 - 00:25:34:26
Speaker 1
It, if you can keep it.

00:25:35:01 - 00:25:59:07
Speaker 2
And I think that sometimes my fellow American citizens. And listen, I can understand this. There are people in America that are really struggling right now. You can, if you listen to them, if you hear them, they're saying, look, I'm really struggling. I can't make my rent, I can't make my mortgage. A lot of guys are going, I feel like crap because I can't, you know, I can't protect my family or provide for my family.

00:25:59:09 - 00:26:14:09
Speaker 2
I'm having to choose between sending my kids to school or, you know, making sure that I pay my insurance. I can't lose my health care because I've got a special needs kid. And yeah, I get the democracies at risk, but I need this. I need to be able to make a living for you all. Go figure that out.

00:26:14:11 - 00:26:31:18
Speaker 2
And I understand that. And it's really, really important. And in government, just like in the private sector and in the faith based community, we have to attend to that. Because if you don't attend to that, people go, oh shit, the system is not working for me. Why don't we just throw it out? But when you do that, you throw the baby out with the bathwater.

00:26:31:18 - 00:26:55:22
Speaker 2
You don't know what's coming next. Remember, you always have to have a plan for day two. And it feels like in America right now, the anger and the frustration is bubbling up. But we don't have a plan for day two, and that's that's worth spending some time thinking about without us yelling at each other across the aisle, because it's going to take some serious, serious thought to rebuild what we're about to tear down.

00:26:55:24 - 00:27:14:13
Speaker 2
Oh, what it feels like we're about to tear down and it's just not in government. Well you see this in, in the private sector too. You see it with religion as well. You see it with race. But my sense over time is it's a lot easier to stoke people up through fear and rage than it is to bring them together through compassion and justice and mercy.

00:27:14:13 - 00:27:20:26
Speaker 2
And I think therein lies a real challenge for us in the next. I don't know how many years it's going to be, but it's going to be a bit.

00:27:20:28 - 00:27:46:28
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. I wonder sometimes when I, I think about it, I feel like, you know, this is the I believe America is the oldest it's ever been. Meaning the average age of the American population is, I mean, compared to like, the 60s, I mean, we are way grayer. Correct. And a lot of a lot of what am I wrong?

00:27:46:28 - 00:28:17:00
Speaker 1
A lot of what we're seeing is what you would expect to see from an old country, a kind of a resistance to change. A, and, a kind of fearfulness and paranoia, a kind of the worst things that, you know, there are lovely things that come with aging. Yeah, but there are there are a set of there's a kind of there's a, there's a set of challenges that come and I sort of feel, I feel like in some sense we're seeing we're taking on the personality of an aging person.

00:28:17:00 - 00:28:43:15
Speaker 2
Well, to, to, as you use your phrase, to gently more with you. It is probably true that demographically we are older, that the people in America are older now than they have been throughout our 250 year history. That that probably is true, but it is also true that America is a very young country. We're only 250 years old, and I recall, recall in one of my travels when I was in, I was in Scotland standing.

00:28:43:15 - 00:28:57:12
Speaker 2
They had some function at a castle that we went to, and I was standing there looking out the castle window, going, well, what's over there? And they said, well, that's where the McGinn Hayes live. And I said, who are they? They said, our neighbors. I said, how long they've been there. They said the 800 years we've been hating them.

00:28:57:15 - 00:29:29:11
Speaker 2
But oh wait a minute, 800 year. So I as a as a mayor of a city, I have a uniquely different perspective than someone that's a congressman or a senator or even a president. A mayor generally is a problem solver. You have to like, fix immediate problems, like if the toilets are not working on the street, lights are not working, or the holes like you and you, by the way, you don't have a big security detail around you where you're not going to the store or gone to the cleaners, or where where people can grab you and say, hey man, what the hell's going on?

00:29:29:13 - 00:29:50:26
Speaker 2
And you don't really have a lot of room for ideological arguments. You got to get stuff done. And so when the public is thinking about, you know, stuff like that, there's not a whole lot of patience for people arguing philosophically about what has to happen or not happen. But you have to ask yourself today, what is the problem that I'm solving for?

00:29:50:27 - 00:30:12:24
Speaker 2
Not, oh, it's terrible. Isn't the world awful? The question is, what is the problem that you're solving for today? So let's just say the problem is one of the challenges. We have a very young country that is in historical terms a teenager. So maybe the teenagers brains not developed and it's not thinking right. And it's emotionally not where it needs to be to be making life or death decisions.

00:30:12:28 - 00:30:40:08
Speaker 2
You could argue that historically we're in that point right now. But but we're occupied by an older generation of people who are like but I'm afraid to change. So is that the problem. Is that the problem that we're solving. But like what are we really seeing right now. Which is I think one of the most important questions, always seeing the end of democracy, are we seeing a a teenage, you know, just rant and rave and, or an older person's unwillingness to change?

00:30:40:08 - 00:30:55:09
Speaker 2
And how do you here's the bigger question for the country, I think, how do you navigate from where we are to where we need to be because we don't want to end ourselves? And what do we have to do? Who needs to show up? What does that conversation look like? What do we actually need to be thinking about?

00:30:55:09 - 00:31:12:02
Speaker 2
How are we going to wrap our heads about this technological, this rapid technological development, which now we now know is AI? Nobody was talking about AI four years ago, except all the smart people who were thinking about it 30 years ago. But it got into the general lexicon, like what, 3 or 4 years ago. And all of a sudden now everybody's like, what's this?

00:31:12:02 - 00:31:36:27
Speaker 2
I think? And most people don't really understand it just like crypto. And so all people are gone. What is all this stuff? I just learned how to use my phone, for God sakes. And I think they're anxious and they're nervous about it. And I think when people are in a state of fear and people are trying to hold on to a memory that makes them warm, that maybe never was by recreating a history that actually didn't exist.

00:31:36:27 - 00:31:52:11
Speaker 2
But you think it maybe did because you didn't see the whole thing. You go, look, no, I don't I don't want to change. But the world is, you know, the one constant thing in the world is this everything is changing all the time, and it is very dynamic. And you need to get with that program, and you grow and you get better.

00:31:52:11 - 00:31:54:15
Speaker 2
Or maybe you atrophy and you die.

00:31:54:17 - 00:31:55:06
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:31:55:08 - 00:32:04:15
Speaker 2
Right. Right. I mean, that's fair. Yeah. I mean, it's one or the other, or maybe it's some place in between where you just stay static and nothing gets any better. Yeah, I don't know.

00:32:04:18 - 00:32:31:26
Speaker 1
I mean, I would say that the, the, what we're talking about is the level of interest and curiosity confidence you have in the future. So when you're 25 years old and you're, oh, you're a nation of 25 year olds, as we were in the sort of, 70s, late 60s. Right? We were essentially a nation, 25 year olds.

00:32:31:29 - 00:32:50:24
Speaker 1
The future is very much on your mind because you that's the world that you're moving into inheriting. And the kind of anxieties you have are anxieties about what the future promises for you. But you're always looking ahead. You know that your current circumstances are temporary. That's all you know, right? It's not going to be like this five years from now.

00:32:50:27 - 00:33:10:22
Speaker 1
But if you're a nation of 65 year olds, then you're not invested in the future in the same way you're looking about. You're into this today. How do I hold on to what I have? You know, you're no longer willing to make sort of gambles on behalf of some uncertain future, because you're not going to be around for it.

00:33:10:28 - 00:33:35:27
Speaker 1
Let's you're not making that kind of consciously or carelessly, but it's just human nature, right? I see it in myself. I've noticed now I'm living now 62. I've noticed something really interesting. I love magazines. I travel a lot for years and years and years. I would go to, like, the magazine store in the airport, and I would buy travel magazines.

00:33:35:27 - 00:33:45:06
Speaker 1
Right now, I haven't bought a travel magazine in like five years now I buy home magazines. It's like, that's and that's exactly what I'm talking about.

00:33:45:06 - 00:33:46:08
Speaker 2
You think you do that.

00:33:46:11 - 00:33:52:13
Speaker 1
Because I'm no longer I'm no longer, like, driven by this kind of insatiable curiosity I see as much of the world as I can.

00:33:52:14 - 00:33:53:16
Speaker 2
So that you want to stay home.

00:33:53:18 - 00:33:55:10
Speaker 1
Now, I want to say,

00:33:55:12 - 00:33:56:02
Speaker 2
That makes perfect.

00:33:56:02 - 00:33:58:10
Speaker 1
Sense, you know, and that that's not a trivial thing.

00:33:58:10 - 00:33:58:25
Speaker 2
That's all.

00:33:58:25 - 00:34:11:24
Speaker 1
Of course, it is a significant shift in my psychology. Right. And that changes my that changes the way I think about. I am way more invested in the status quo than I was in in it. Does it make you less?

00:34:11:27 - 00:34:20:27
Speaker 2
Does it make you less? You less curious, maybe. Or are you not? Or you just curious from a sedentary position as opposed to you have to move your feet to a position?

00:34:20:28 - 00:34:50:21
Speaker 1
Let me give you an example of something that I think about a lot, which is that, I, I own a house, and what I have forgotten is the kind of anxiety that's associated with not on the house. So I have these this little company, and we have all these people in their late 20s and early 30s who work for me, who it is the particular condition of their generally, they're probably the first generation of these guys are professionals.

00:34:50:21 - 00:34:57:03
Speaker 1
They make what in any other time in American society would be called good money, and they can't afford it.

00:34:57:04 - 00:34:58:15
Speaker 2
Live in your number one issue.

00:34:58:20 - 00:35:19:26
Speaker 1
House is off the table, right? That is a the psychological condition of being 28 and thinking of owning a house as an impossibility is something that I have no appreciation of. I mean, I intellectually like, oh God, that I don't know what that feels like anymore because I'm no longer there. And I was never that when I was 28.

00:35:19:26 - 00:35:22:27
Speaker 1
I wasn't there when I was 28. You could.

00:35:23:00 - 00:35:23:27
Speaker 2
Quit when I was 20.

00:35:23:27 - 00:35:25:04
Speaker 1
Eight. Yes.

00:35:25:06 - 00:35:26:15
Speaker 2
I think percent interest.

00:35:26:17 - 00:35:28:21
Speaker 1
You know, I just, I yeah.

00:35:28:23 - 00:36:01:20
Speaker 2
Which they forget. But it's a curious thing as you see it. It's interesting because in my political travels, lack of access to housing or the inability to own a house has given people great anxiety. Because they don't they I do think there is a profound sense now I can't fully explain this. Some smart economists can, that younger people are not making the same money, or the money that they're making is not gone as far as it did when it when their parents had it.

00:36:01:25 - 00:36:19:28
Speaker 2
And, and they don't feel like I know what this feels like because Katrina hit and destroyed everything I had. If you've never had that happen to you, it's very hard to really get in your brain how it's possible that you could wake up tomorrow and everything that you knew was gone. It's not just the physical thing was gone.

00:36:20:00 - 00:36:42:18
Speaker 2
It's like that it actually could go away. And so there's a sense of confidence that you had that it's always going to be all right to you know what, maybe it's not. And it creates a certain level of insecurity and uncertainty that allows you to be more attuned to, well, who's supposed to be protecting me? And so back to you, the point that you made that I think is really important for the country.

00:36:42:20 - 00:37:02:18
Speaker 2
If there are a lot of older folks and they're not worried about the things that they used to worry about, which is the future, and they're not thinking about the solvency of Social Security, the capacity of the economy to take care of. Then all of a sudden, these young, younger folks are gone. Those older folks need to get out of the way because they're not taking care of us.

00:37:02:18 - 00:37:21:00
Speaker 2
You're leaving us with maybe a deficit and a debt that we can't handle. Maybe you don't care about Social Security. In other words, you're not thinking about my future and my stability. So now I'm pissed. Now I got to do something because it's not taken care of. Now I've got to have a counterrevolution, if you will. If that's not the important word politically, you know this.

00:37:21:00 - 00:37:24:18
Speaker 1
This totally explains, right. I don't know what's going on in New York right now. Yeah, well.

00:37:24:18 - 00:37:25:13
Speaker 2
You see some of that, right?

00:37:25:13 - 00:37:51:05
Speaker 1
Well, because with mum down me, the number of conversations I've had with people who if you ask them point blank, they will say they, they disagree with an awful lot of what he stands for. They disagree way more with him than they agree with him. But they'll they always come back to the fact that he's young. Yeah. And they've had it with everyone he's running against is in their 60s or even 70s, and there's a whole generation of people who just are fed up.

00:37:51:05 - 00:37:55:21
Speaker 1
They're like, I don't, I can't, I can't, I can't vote for the old guard anymore.

00:37:55:21 - 00:38:04:12
Speaker 2
Correct. I don't think, I don't know when Trump's going to leave us. He's going to leave us politically in 2028 no matter what he says.

00:38:04:14 - 00:38:06:04
Speaker 1
But I didn't see.

00:38:06:06 - 00:38:19:16
Speaker 2
Because he's just messing with people he knows better. But by the way, if he's going to do it, I actually have a dream. It's like the sharks versus the Jets. Best against his best. If we're going to have three terms for presidents, Barack Obama needs to hook it up and run against Trump. And let's just have it.

00:38:19:21 - 00:38:20:15
Speaker 2
That's just the way.

00:38:20:15 - 00:38:21:14
Speaker 1
That's right.

00:38:21:16 - 00:38:36:13
Speaker 2
Because you can't he can't run for a third term and Obama not run for a third time. And a Barack then shot Michelle well and will be there. So I'm not really worried about that. But I think he's messing with people okay. Yeah. But but his idea of the world it it's his idea of the world that's bad.

00:38:36:13 - 00:39:08:28
Speaker 2
Not just his execution of it. The Stephen Miller's of the world and they literally think that some of us are better than others. They don't. They do not believe in the idea that we all come to the table of democracy as equals. And they don't believe in the things that I think make America the great country that we in fact are, which is the rule of law, the separation of of, you know, independent branches of government, the respect for, the way things are supposed to ebb and flow and how we're supposed to resolve our differences with each other.

00:39:08:28 - 00:39:29:27
Speaker 2
And I don't think that idea can hold for a long period of time. I've never in in my life, both in the political sphere, in the personal sphere, tried to dominate. Other people will only work for a while. Even if you're the stronger of the two, it will eventually evaporate because people don't like being oppressed. And freedom is America's calling card.

00:39:29:27 - 00:39:44:12
Speaker 2
At the end of the day, now we may get their crooked. We may get that backwards. We may get their upside down. But at some point in time, the power of the idea of freedom and how we find it and how we give each other space, which of course, in my opinion, was a real genius of the Founding Fathers.

00:39:44:14 - 00:40:11:17
Speaker 2
I don't think this is why originalism doesn't make any sense to me. I think the Founding Fathers knew because they looked at all different societies, that the way people can peacefully coexist is by being thoughtful of each other and giving each other room to be as much, and freedom, right, to not necessarily be Christian or Muslim or Jew or not necessarily be on the left economically or the right that was supposed to have an accordion that protects people's basic rights.

00:40:11:17 - 00:40:28:01
Speaker 2
It allows us to peacefully coexist in our differences. The whole point of it was to live with people who were different, and to do it in a way that allowed for the peaceful transition of power, and not to have to do it by the rule of kings so that people were assassinated, or we had to have wars and that we had to have coups.

00:40:28:03 - 00:40:45:14
Speaker 2
And I think that that I think America is eventually going to come back and say, I like that idea better than the one where some of us rule over others. But let me just say this we're not doing that well right now. We're not performing in the governmental sector well. And by the way, the private sector is not responding well either.

00:40:45:16 - 00:41:02:27
Speaker 2
And bending the knee to or to autocratic Prince, that's a bad that's going to lead us to a bad place. But look, you have the future. See you. The one. Like what? How do you how do you if you think it's go sit back on a porch and think about this. How do you can you see this unfolding or how do you think that how do you think that it will?

00:41:02:28 - 00:41:28:08
Speaker 1
It was funny, you mentioned originalism. And my problem with originalism is it's about the veneration of the vision of a bunch of white guys who talked about equality and forgot about what it was, 15 million black people who were living in a correct country and in subjugation. I can't get past that. I'm like, as brilliant as these guys were, they had a blind spot a mile wide.

00:41:28:08 - 00:41:36:12
Speaker 1
Correct. What do we what are we celebrating here? Like the these these dudes are the gold standard. Correct. Like that's the the bar so low is.

00:41:36:12 - 00:41:55:20
Speaker 2
Giving them the benefit of the doubt. I agree with you about that. But let's just say yeah, that they were all brilliant. Let's just say they were all brilliant was just concede the point. Benjamin Franklin, the Thomas Jefferson, the whole crowd. We know historically that they had a blind spot because it's obvious that they did. And that was not something to be revered or to me to be replicated.

00:41:55:22 - 00:42:21:11
Speaker 2
But even if they were the most brilliant people in the world, there is no way they could see what's happening today. And I think actually, to their credit, they actually knew that, which is why they constructed the the document, the way they constructed it. I think it's a mistake of modern day legal, purportedly legal scholars who say that, no, they were so brilliant and they were so smart that they foresaw everything and they meant everything that they said.

00:42:21:11 - 00:42:45:09
Speaker 2
That's just not that's just not possible. And in my mind, the greatness America's greatness comes from people's ability to be who they are and to celebrate our differences and to create new things all of the time. Back to why New Orleans is special. It's the iteration. It's the constant growth. It's the constant questioning. It's the constant ability to challenge each other.

00:42:45:15 - 00:43:01:10
Speaker 2
As I like to say, be hard on the problem, but try to be soft on the people. And this confusion that we have in America about what strength is like. Strength doesn't mean being able to beat somebody up because you're more powerful than them. That's not what strength is. That might be what power is, but that's not what strength is.

00:43:01:12 - 00:43:18:08
Speaker 2
Strength is a strength is is a more elegant version of power. You know what I mean? It's like it takes a lot of strength not to hit somebody back who hit you in, or respond in a way. And I think, I think our sense of masculinity is getting, you know, really perverted.

00:43:19:00 - 00:43:26:21
Speaker 2
And as is excellence, like the the eye is somehow bad. I think the, I think I think diversity is a pathway towards excellence.

00:43:26:24 - 00:43:28:29
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.

00:43:29:01 - 00:43:59:06
Speaker 2
It's not the, it's not the opposite which it's, it's a, it's a, it's a nice way to give someone who doesn't deserve a job a job. How can you how how can you. Well, this is what I don't understand. Especially about some of my white friends. If you if we were having a football game and we were picking sides, you know, how would line up and everybody's going to get the pick, you certainly would not go pick all the white guys if you were gone into a football game or a basketball game or anywhere, you would not you would go pick the people that you thought were going to help you win.

00:43:59:06 - 00:43:59:18
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:43:59:19 - 00:44:02:27
Speaker 1
And there's no you wouldn't use what you wouldn't use. Race is a criterion.

00:44:02:27 - 00:44:23:08
Speaker 2
Correct. That's a that's a better way to say it. Thank you. It's a much kind of nice way to say it. And plus if unless you don't believe in that, some people don't believe in God or they, they pray to whoever they pray to. Unless if you believe in a higher power and you believe that they somehow created the earth and human beings, they couldn't possibly have been so bad at what they did.

00:44:23:11 - 00:44:32:00
Speaker 2
To put only the excellent traits in one group of people that looked a certain way, because there are 8 billion people in the world. So like, this is this.

00:44:32:00 - 00:44:42:08
Speaker 1
Whole it's the the battle against the, is being led by a bunch of white guys who could not have made it without their connection, personal connections to the. So it's like they are the the,

00:44:42:15 - 00:44:46:14
Speaker 2
Exhibit one is Pete Hegseth. Oh my goodness, the secretary of defense who's like a.

00:44:46:14 - 00:44:58:12
Speaker 1
Buffoon, right? Who's like, I mean, it's it's unbelievable that they have gotten away with this the least qualified group of 100 cabinet members in history are like somehow making the argument that.

00:44:58:14 - 00:45:23:09
Speaker 2
That's exactly right. So I'm just want but the the question that I have and it's an it's it's something that's worth, I think smart people thinking about what you want, how to where are we going? How are we going to get there. What is a problem that we're solving for today so that America can actually come out of this and be stronger at the end of the day, and I'm not sure we're doing that very poorly right now, I would argue, and not just in government.

00:45:23:12 - 00:45:32:29
Speaker 2
Yeah, we're doing it across the board because we're in a moment and we're not taking a breath to get out of the moment. And I'm wondering if, if you see a pathway.

00:45:33:01 - 00:45:59:00
Speaker 1
I mean, the quicker the hearings to, you know, if you read the news this morning on Amazon, cut 20,000 managerial jobs, ups cut 40 48,000 jobs. That's 70,000 jobs in one day. Yeah. Good jobs. Not not like that's pension level.

00:45:59:00 - 00:46:03:26
Speaker 2
That's that's mortgages. That's mortgages. A car payments can't open tuition for kids.

00:46:03:26 - 00:46:04:20
Speaker 1
There's people who.

00:46:04:20 - 00:46:05:21
Speaker 2
Are people out as they.

00:46:05:21 - 00:46:30:27
Speaker 1
Should. And I feel like what we didn't have there was an art to my mind, the political debates that we had in this country over the last 2 or 3 rounds of elections have had an artificiality to them, because the underlying economy was doing so well, or at least at the appearance of doing well. And so I feel like when when things are going well, people are free to kind of screw around.

00:46:30:29 - 00:46:46:01
Speaker 1
We've been screwing around, not been taking things seriously. When you were in a situation where tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs in a very short period of time, the screwing around ends. Yeah. So I don't know.

00:46:46:03 - 00:46:53:29
Speaker 2
Does it take a catastrophe? I think this is a self-fulfilling question. Does it take a catastrophic event to get our head straight, to say we can't?

00:46:53:29 - 00:47:02:02
Speaker 1
Maybe. I mean, the best case scenario is that the coming hard times will. We'll straighten this out. That's the best. I have no idea what it does, man.

00:47:02:06 - 00:47:06:20
Speaker 2
Okay, listen. Yeah.

00:47:06:23 - 00:47:16:26
Speaker 1
Which we haven't had, we haven't had a sustained period of economic downturn in real a real sustained period in decade.

00:47:16:28 - 00:47:46:24
Speaker 2
Wealth, 60 or 70. Well, even longer than that. But think about this when people I think people are to, memories or not good enough. In truth, in 1999. December 30th. That's the end of the seven, right? Right before the year 2000 came to us. That New Year's Day, you will remember, because you're old enough that Y2K, which was a moniker for the computers or programed the wrong way.

00:47:46:24 - 00:48:06:27
Speaker 2
And as soon as it clicks over the not, you know, designed to do that, the world is going to stop because we don't understand how computers work. Remember that people were freaking out. That was really we had come out of a sustained period of really good economic growth at that point in time, and at the in that moment, I believe that the United States was poised to lap the world economically, socially, spiritually.

00:48:06:27 - 00:48:42:13
Speaker 2
We were like, we're absolutely going to win the 21st century. Now, here we stand 25 years later, and I think that every reasonable person would go, America has squandered her lead. Now, I think it's worth asking why? What happened, what decisions did we make and where did we go wrong. And I think there's some obvious answers to that, but it's the inability of us to ask that question because we're so wrapped up in how great we are, quote unquote, that we will not do a discernment dive that every human being has to do in their personal life to kind of get better.

00:48:42:20 - 00:48:59:04
Speaker 2
Like, we have this up. I'm, I'm, I am I love America, it's a great country. I'm so thankful that I've been able to be a part of this. However, in my in my growth, development, trained by the nuns and the Jesuits, is that you always have to look at yourself and say, well, you know, really how mean, how good was I?

00:48:59:04 - 00:49:23:20
Speaker 2
And, you know, when it's just me and, you know, the mirror and me praying, you got to think to yourself, I made some mistakes. What did we do? And I think if you look back at some of the trauma we experienced, 911 was a massively difficult, traumatic moment for America, as it should have been. But it's worth asking ourself, was our response to that actually as wise and as smart and as thoughtful as it could be?

00:49:23:22 - 00:49:44:05
Speaker 2
Katrina was a traumatic event that we experienced. We responded to that. The, the the, the recession during that same period of time was another traumatic event. Then also, we had the BP oil spill, which we were like, okay, what the hell was happening? Then we had the political trauma of the Trump starting and stopping and what the heck was going to happen.

00:49:44:05 - 00:50:01:15
Speaker 2
We've had a number of different wars in Afghanistan. And then of course, we just keep compounding the difficulties. And now we're at a point where we almost can't talk to each other. So for the first 25 years, instead of being ahead of everybody else, we can pretend that we are or we can actually go look at it economically.

00:50:01:15 - 00:50:17:14
Speaker 2
Or is our foundation really good politically? How are we doing emotionally and spiritually? Where are we? And I think most people would have to look at that honestly and honest and say, we didn't do nearly as well as we should have and we shouldn't be in a competition right now, but we should have. We should have done better.

00:50:17:14 - 00:50:41:29
Speaker 2
And if we're going to win that press the the rest of the century, I think we can because we have the capacity to do it, but not if we don't have our values set. And when I say values, I mean like the Democratic values and Republican of being a republic and giving people room to grow, and how are we going to get an economy moving in the right direction so people are not freaking out and then just reacting as opposed to preparing ourselves for a very difficult future?

00:50:42:06 - 00:51:08:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know man. It it's a it's a weird it's a profoundly weird moment. We've been doing this project on, reconstruction and the, the one that, I mean, a topic about which I knew very little. But the one benefit of talking about reconstruction is it is a reminder that there have been darker periods and a very good history.

00:51:08:20 - 00:51:09:06
Speaker 1
You keep on.

00:51:09:06 - 00:51:15:04
Speaker 2
What do you remember? Remember for everybody, when you now think that you know about reconstruction?

00:51:15:06 - 00:51:35:14
Speaker 1
Well, I you know, I mean, what I didn't you know, the the war is ostensibly one slaves are freed, the 14th amendment is passed. We we think we're enfranchising an entire group of people, and then we take our eye off the ball and span of ten years, if everything is.

00:51:35:14 - 00:51:43:12
Speaker 2
But what we did was make the point that people will forget. We did enfranchise people. And as a consequence of that, good things started happening.

00:51:43:14 - 00:51:44:04
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:51:44:07 - 00:52:06:24
Speaker 2
People began to be elected to office. That represented the population that was there. We gave license to because we had taken it away from a group of people that began to exercise their enfranchisement and began to do really, really good things. And then there was a deal that was cut, and the federal government that was protecting the rights of everybody just kind of left the playing field.

00:52:06:29 - 00:52:22:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. And then it then it reverted. Yeah. So there's this theory of history that, you know, we go ten yards and then we take back ten yards. We go ten yards, we take back ten yards. Other people think, no, it's like Cain and Abel. They've been running side by side the whole time. And one side's been one and and one side has been losing.

00:52:22:16 - 00:52:48:16
Speaker 2
I have a very strong opinion about this in America has done a very poor job of navigating the issue of race. That it is our Achilles heel that that slavery obviously was our original sin. But not being able to, to in a thoughtful way to in a thoughtful way talk about race and talk about it in a meaningful way as opposed to oh no, I hate you, you hate me, or you know that we just it's almost a childish.

00:52:48:18 - 00:53:10:18
Speaker 2
And other countries have thought about this better than we have. And I don't think that unless we figure out how to do this, not go around that not go under it, not go over it, have a really hard conversation about what it means and what it did, what the consequence was, what the sequela of it was. We're not going to we're going to continue to be in this push and push back for a long time.

00:53:10:18 - 00:53:30:14
Speaker 2
And yes, there have been worse times, I would think post-Civil War, Civil War, clearly, but I'm not sure that we're not close to a really bad time. I'd like somebody to make me feel better that no, I'm wrong. This is just a little bit of a moment. You know, I'm not. I'm not sure about that right now. I'm.

00:53:30:14 - 00:53:52:17
Speaker 2
I'm really uncertain. Yeah, about it. And I don't think that if we don't do something intentional that it won't be it won't get worse fast, because I think the the, the forces in this country that want to really take us back and I don't think back was good for a lot of people in the country, and a lot of people don't want to go back as nostalgic and as wonderful as, you know, the Andy Griffith Show was, or Leave It to Beaver.

00:53:52:20 - 00:53:53:21
Speaker 1
You know.

00:53:53:23 - 00:53:55:26
Speaker 2
All the Little Rascals, whatever.

00:53:55:26 - 00:54:01:28
Speaker 1
You know what? What did they view? What are your favorite? Is, what do you feel?

00:54:01:28 - 00:54:10:12
Speaker 2
Do you. I hate to even ask you this question because I'm afraid of the answer. Do you feel hopeful in your 62nd year of your life for you?

00:54:10:13 - 00:54:12:20
Speaker 1
Well, I am by nature an optimist, so.

00:54:12:23 - 00:54:13:05
Speaker 2
As am.

00:54:13:05 - 00:54:37:03
Speaker 1
I. I feel like, you know, there's a there's a great, my favorite quote from Napoleon, the most famous of all Napoleon quotes. I never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake. That's my I feel like Trump is make is. I don't want to I, I don't want interrupt him. I think he's making a massive mistake.

00:54:37:03 - 00:54:39:25
Speaker 1
I think he's going to pay for it. Yeah. So I.

00:54:39:27 - 00:54:40:24
Speaker 2
Along with a lot of other.

00:54:40:24 - 00:55:06:20
Speaker 1
People. Yeah. And I, you know, the thing about we that we're a nation of one step forward, one step back cuts the other way. I think we're also a nation of one step backward. Step forward. Did I feel like, we have it in us to correct for we of course, correct it after Watergate. We of course correct it after a whole series of kind of scandals in the 70s.

00:55:06:23 - 00:55:09:23
Speaker 1
And I feel like there's a chance we could. We could right the ship.

00:55:09:23 - 00:55:41:08
Speaker 2
I don't disagree with that. I think that's probably right. I'm praying that that's right. But that doesn't mean that people don't have to do anything to get there. And one of the reasons I'm hopeful after Katrina hit, when the city was 17ft underwater, 250,000 homes were destroyed. Buildings around here were turned around like the Wizard of Oz. I was on top of the wicked, which I personally witnessed with my own eyes when all the people who was special were gone.

00:55:41:10 - 00:56:06:23
Speaker 2
I call this angels among us, people literally coming out of the water who were the kind of folks that most people would say, I'm walking away from them because I don't. I'm afraid of them. These people like rose up, and they just came out of nowhere and just found a way to resurrect and redeem the city. And I think that spirit is undying, and I think that it's plentiful, and I don't know where it's going to come from or how it's going to happen.

00:56:06:28 - 00:56:23:21
Speaker 2
Yeah, but I just believe because I saw it happen once where people were not. I saw three, three black boys pushing an all white man down the street on a cafeteria cart. I saw an old white woman holding the hands of young black girls who they did not know. I saw people who never met each other, basically. Go on.

00:56:23:21 - 00:56:42:18
Speaker 2
Wait. We are like in a moment. Now where not only does a rising tide lifts all boats, we're all in the same damn boat. And we're not now asking anybody, you know, what the immigration status was? Who, by the way, many of those people helped us rebuild the city. And I saw people find their soul again. I saw it with my own eyes.

00:56:42:20 - 00:57:04:18
Speaker 2
And when that happens, and then every major storm that's happened since then, no matter where I was, whether it was with Jose Andres feeding people or under the bridge, in, in Texas, at some point, the profound sense of humanity grabs us again in our darkest moments. And it comes. It just comes. It comes from somewhere. It comes through some person.

00:57:04:21 - 00:57:30:09
Speaker 2
And it's that's I think it's that spirit that I've been talking about that cuts across ages because you could just see it. But but we have to be in a place. And sometimes tragedy forces this. Yeah. Where you're able to see your humanity and you're not able to see the differences anymore. And sometimes it's a painful circumstance that causes us, that allows us to get back into a moment that we somehow had forgotten to be, and because we took it for granted.

00:57:30:11 - 00:57:44:12
Speaker 2
Yeah. And I pray that it doesn't have to be that painful. But there's something in me that says, and unfortunately, we human beings take too much for granted too soon before we actually, you know, are ready to have to do the hard stuff.

00:57:44:14 - 00:57:51:28
Speaker 1
Yeah. Which I think, I don't know. I wish it was a happier note to end on, but, well, I.

00:57:51:28 - 00:57:56:18
Speaker 2
Think it's going to be okay, but it's going to it's going to be hard and I think it's going to hurt.

00:57:56:23 - 00:57:58:03
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:57:58:05 - 00:58:00:07
Speaker 2
Anyway, Malcolm. Thank you. Thanks. Good to see you.

00:58:00:07 - 00:58:12:03
Speaker 1
Yeah.