13:31
climate change is an education problem
13:33
mm-hmm okay the numbers tell E Barrett
13:35
out the percentage of people with PhDs
13:37
who don’t believe climate change is real
13:40
is trivial the percent if you have
13:41
master’s degrees is maybe a little
13:43
higher but right if if you double the
13:46
percentage of Americans with a college
13:48
degree there’d be no problem of climate
13:50
change denial in this country and then
13:52
what that would mean is the world would
13:55
not would have a would actually have a
13:57
shot at maybe addressing it in a way
13:59
that right now looks unlikely a lot of
14:02
our problems are education problems in
14:04
disguise
14:05
because the ability to believe in fake
14:08
things is essential to upholding the
14:12
kind of system that we have otherwise
14:14
how do you explain in a democracy a
14:17
system that doesn’t work for most people
14:18
it makes no sense well people have to be
14:22
persuaded to believe in things that are
14:24
not real the democracies become a
14:26
plutonomy where the power of that vote
14:29
is diminished and the more you can
14:31
manipulate people as you just described
14:33
the more power the money has relative to
14:37
the individual and I’ve been trying to
14:38
help people see the connections between
14:40
each of these stories you know I was
14:42
just saying today you know we have a
14:44
story in the news of Michael Bloomberg
14:46
giving 1.8 billion to John Hopkins very
14:48
nice gift but why does he have that
14:50
money why is that happening that way
14:52
then you got a couple days before this
14:55
bombshell story on Facebook and how it
14:59
totally looked the other way as the
15:01
Russians were waging cyber war on this
15:03
country to basically protect itself from
15:05
government scrutiny then you got the
15:07
story of Amazon running a The Bachelor
15:09
contest on American cities getting you
15:12
know a tax break for the world’s richest
15:14
man you know then you go back and we
15:16
just have the 10-year anniversary of the
15:18
financial crisis and basically now 10
15:20
years later it turns out the only people
15:22
who are fully recovered from it other
15:24
people who caused that and on and on and
15:27
on and on these are all connected and I
15:30
think we are not who we think
15:33
we are in this country and we are living
15:36
in an America that is the opposite of
15:38
our self-image if you ask if you stop at
15:41
any red state blue state small town big
15:44
city farmstand and you say what are your
15:48
kind of central ideas of what this
15:49
country is about one of things that come
15:51
up very fast in my experience is
15:53
American dream like whatever effort you
15:55
put in that’s where you end up this is
16:00
actually leat less true in America than
16:03
in any other rich country the thing we
16:05
think is our thing is like the opposite
16:08
of our thing ours is actually the most
16:10
cast we are the kind of most cast
16:13
Society among the rich countries and by
16:18
the way the reduction of funding for our
16:22
public universities like University of
16:25
Michigan where you went to school where
16:27
I grew up around or Cal Berkeley they’ve
16:32
ceased to be vehicles of upward mobility
16:34
and according to Raj Chetty study with a
16:37
number of colleagues the University of
16:41
Michigan now has more people from the
16:42
top one percent then from the bottom
16:45
sixty combined as undergraduates and
16:48
that’s 40,000 students that’s not some
16:50
boutique College picking off trust fund
16:52
kids that’s how they got to sustain
16:54
themselves out of the hole like you said
16:57
the mask is like all occluding our
17:02
vision of what’s really happening you
17:04
know sometimes you can have like a very
17:06
bad disease that remains invisible in
17:11
your body right there’s cancers that you
17:13
people have for years without realizing
17:15
they have cancer and then and then it’s
17:18
too late I think we’ve had a cancer for
17:20
a while in terms of the veneration of
17:23
wealth thinking that people are smart
17:25
just because they’re rich thinking they
17:26
know what our school should be like just
17:27
because they made money in hedge funds
17:29
thinking that they you know have insight
17:31
into how we should fight diseases just
17:33
because you know they made a soft drink
17:34
company and cause diseases and that
17:39
cancer has been in our society for a
17:42
while and it was pretty much undetected
17:44
people weren’t critiquing these things
17:46
Mark Zuckerberg a few years ago
17:48
announced I’m giving 99% of my wealth
17:50
away I mean every newspaper story was
17:52
this like puffy like gauzy philanthropy
17:56
thing I think Trump is the moment where
18:00
we realize we have cancer and I
18:04
appreciate him for that I appreciate the
18:07
way in which he is flamboyantly made
18:10
visible many of the ugliest tendencies
18:14
of our society he is the incarnation of
18:18
so much of what is bad in a culture that
18:22
Revere’s money and he has tased Rama
18:26
ties so many of the things I write about
18:28
in this book the the notion that the
18:31
people who caused our problems are best
18:32
equipped to solve them somehow
18:34
the notion that you can kind of seek to
18:37
enrich yourself and sort of fight for
18:38
the common man at the same time when
18:40
when the notion that you can you know be
18:46
that just because you’re a
18:47
businessperson you have like you know
18:49
these special skills to solve any other
18:51
problem that have nothing to do with
18:53
your lane well I think the the
18:57
sensibility you know we talk about new
18:59
economic thinking like it’s this model
19:02
versus that model or whatever but you’re
19:05
penetrating to a different level which
19:09
is what I would call the emotional
19:11
contours of who you want to be and who
19:14
you allow to be the judging jury of the
19:18
meaning of your existence and by
19:20
understanding the context in which ideas
19:23
are formed and how they William are
19:26
called resonate with value it challenges
19:33
us all to think about governance
19:38
media what matters to us
19:42
you’re really you’re opening up a lot of
19:45
structures that people who just played
19:47
my model versus your model never
19:50
considered and I think that that to me
19:53
that’s a very beautiful contribution
19:56
that you’re making thank you
19:57
and will help us all go deeper Cornell
20:02
west the famous theologian and scholar
20:05
said to me one time we were on stage at
20:07
the Union Theological Seminary she said
20:09
Robert sometimes you know you don’t
20:12
understand what you have to do is get
20:15
quiet and go deeper until you can come
20:18
back yeah and I think the challenge that
20:20
you mission in this book for all of the
20:22
thinkers the intellectuals the scholars
20:25
were the people who think that they have
20:28
some kind of right to know a
20:31
paternalistic design architecture for
20:34
society I think you’re shaking us all up
20:37
and I and I’m grateful to you for you
20:39
thank you so much