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3 episodes with deborah fallows
2 episodes with deborah fallows
3 episodes with deborah fallows
2 episodes with deborah fallows
2 episodes with deborah fallows
2 episodes with deborah fallows
2 episodes with deborah fallows
2 episodes with deborah fallows
2 episodes with deborah fallows
Ralph welcomes historian Douglas Brinkley (author of "The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House") as well as journalist and former Carter speechwriter James Fallows to reflect on the life and legacy of the late, great President Jimmy Carter.Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, presidential historian for the New-York Historical Society, trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He has authored, co-authored, and edited more than three dozen books on American history, including Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening, Rosa Parks: A Life, and The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House.When [Jimmy Carter] came in in January of 1977, he said, “The Democratic Party is an albatross around my neck…” The Southern Democrats that voted for Carter in 1976 in the Senate because of, you know, “he's a fellow Southerner,” they abandoned him. They wanted nothing to do with him.Douglas BrinkleyRalph, I don't know if anyone's already told you this—there's a lot of Carter in yourself. You have a lot of similarities in my mind in the sense that you both work tirelessly, and are brilliant, and you learn the nuts and bolts of an issue and you lean into it, and both of you are known for your integrity and your honesty and your diligence and your duty. The question then becomes: Where did Carter fail? And it's about media and about power within the Democratic Party. Those two things Carter couldn't conquer.Douglas BrinkleyI've just written a column called “Jimmy Carter Was My Last President.” And by that I meant he was my last president—and I believe he was the last president for progressive civic groups as well—because he was the last president to actively open up the federal government to engagement and participation by long politically-excluded American activists. He did this actively. He took our calls. No president since has done that. He invited us to the White House to discuss issues. No president since has done that. And that's what I think has been missing in a lot of the coverage—he really believed in a democratic society.Ralph NaderJames Fallows is a contributing writer at the Atlantic and author of the newsletter Breaking the News. He began writing for the magazine in the mid-1970s, reporting from China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and across the United States and has written hundreds of articles for the publication since then. He's also worked as a public radio commentator, a news magazine editor, and for two years he was President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter. He is the author of twelve books, including Who Runs Congress (with Mark Green and David Zwick), The Water Lords, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, and Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America (with Deborah Fallows).Jimmy Carter, for better and worse, had zero national politics experience. That was part of what made him seem refreshing…But Carter, I think one of his limitations in office was that he didn't know what he didn't know, in various realms. This happens to all of us. That's why many outsiders struggle in their first term as president. And so I think yes, he felt as if he could be in command of many things. And I think if he had a second term, he would have been more effective—as Barack Obama was, and others have been.James FallowsI'm really grateful for the chance to talk with you, Ralph, at this moment. As we reflect on a president of the past and prepare for an administration of the future…There are people whose example lasts because they've been consistent over the decades. And I think you, Ralph, in the decades I've known you, that has been the case with you. I think it's the case of Jimmy Carter as well. For people who are consistent and true to themselves, there are times when fortune smiles in their favor and there's times when fortune works against them, but their lasting example endures and can inspire others.James FallowsNews 1/8/251. According to newly released CIA documents, the agency conducted extensive surveillance on Latino – specifically Mexican and Puerto Rican – political activity in the 1960s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s Axios reports. Among other revelations, these documents prove that the agency infiltrated student activist groups “making demands for Mexican American studies classes” – in direct contravention of the CIA's charter, which prohibits domestic activities. The push to disclose the reality of this spying campaign came from Congressmen Jimmy Gomez and Joaquin Castro, whose mother was monitored by the FBI for her Chicano-related activism. Unlike the CIA, the FBI has not released their records.2. Crusading independent journalists Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw are out with a new Substack piece regarding Luigi Mangione. This piece, based on a leaked NYPD intelligence report “Warning of ‘a wide range of extremists' that ‘may view Mangione as a martyr,'” due to their “disdain for corporate greed.” These reporters go on to criticize the media for hiding this report from the public, as they have with other key documents in this case. “The report, produced by the NYPD's Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau …was blasted out to law enforcement and counterterror partners across the country. It was also leaked to select major media outlets which refused to permit the public to read the document…By withholding documents and unilaterally deciding which portions merit public disclosure, the media is playing god.”3. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has finalized its rule to remove medical bills from credit reports. The bureau reports this rule will wipe $49 billion in medical bills from the credit reports of approximately 15 million Americans. Further, embedded within this rule is a critical provision barring creditors from access to certain medical information; in the past this has allowed these firms to demand borrowers use medical devices up to and including prosthetic limbs as collateral for loans and as assets the creditors could repossess.4. President Biden has blocked a buyout of US Steel by the Japanese firm Nippon Steel, per the Washington Post. His reasons for doing so remain murky. Many in Biden's inner circle argued against this course of action, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. And despite Biden framing this decision as a move to protect the union employees of US Steel, Nippon had promised to honor the United Steelworkers contract and many workers backed the deal. In fact, the only person Biden seemed to be in complete agreement with on this issue is incoming President Donald Trump.5. In September 2023, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson issued a groundbreaking proposal: a publicly owned grocery store. While such institutions do exist on a very small scale, the Chicago pilot project would have been the largest in the United States by a wide margin. Yet, when the city had the opportunity to apply for Illinois state funds to begin the process of establishing the project, they “passed” according to the Chicago Tribune. Even still, this measure is far sounder than the previous M.O. of Chicago mayors, who lavished public funds on private corporations like Whole Foods to establish or maintain stores in underserved portions of the city, only for those corporations to turn around and shutter those stores once money spigot ran dry.6. On January 5th, the American Historical Association held their annual meeting. Among other proposals, the association voted on a measure to condemn the “scholasticide” being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. Tim Barker, a PhD candidate at Harvard, reports the AHA passed this measure by a margin of 428 to 88. Along with the condemnation, this measure includes a provision to “form a committee to assist in rebuilding Gaza's educational infrastructure.” The AHA now joins the ever-growing list of organizations slowly coming to grips with the scale of the devastation in Gaza.7. According to Bloomberg, AI data centers are causing potentially massive disruptions to the American power grid. The key problem here is that the huge amounts of power these data centers are gobbling up is resulting in “bad harmonics,” which distort the power that ends up flowing through household appliances like refrigerators and dishwashers. As the piece explains, this harmonic distortion can cause substantial damage to those appliances and even increase the likelihood of electrical fires and blackouts. This issue is a perfect illustration of how tech industry greed is impacting consumers, even those who have nothing to do with their business.8. The Department of Housing and Urban Development reports homelessness increased by over 18% in 2024, per AP. HUD attributes this spike to a dearth of affordable housing, as well as the proliferation of natural disasters. In total, HUD estimates around 770,000 Americans are homeless, though that does not include “those staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own.” More granular data is even more appalling; family homelessness, for example, grew by 40%. Homelessness grew by 12% in 2023.9. On January 7th, Public Citizen announced that they have launched a new tracker to “watchdog federal investigations and cases against alleged corporate criminals…that are at risk of being abandoned, weakened, or scaled back under the Trump administration.” This tracker includes 237 investigations, nearly one third of which involve companies with known ties with the Trump administration. These companies include Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Coinbase, Ford, Tesla, Goldman Sachs, Meta, OpenAI, SpaceX, Pfizer, Black & Decker, and Uber among many others. As Corporate Crime expert Rick Claypool, who compiled this tracker, writes, “Corporate crime enforcement fell during Trump's first term, even as his administration pursued ‘tough' policies against immigrants, protestors, and low-level offenders…It's likely Trump's second term will see a similar or worse dropoff in enforcement.”10. Finally, Senate Republicans are pushing for swift confirmation hearings to install Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, per POLITICO. Yet, the renewed spotlight on Gabbard has brought to light her association with the Science of Identity Foundation, an alleged cult led by “guru” Chris Butler, per Newsweek. The New Yorker reports members of this cult are required to “lie face down when Butler enters a room and even sometimes eat his nail clippings or ‘spoonfuls' of the sand he walked on.”This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe
James Fallows once served as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter and now writes 'Breaking the News' on Substack and has a new article about California's promising future in WIRED magazine. Fallows is a longtime book and magazine writer, whose most recent of 12 books, "Our Towns," co-authored with his wife Deborah Fallows, was a national best-seller and the basis of a 2021 HBO documentary. His perspective, the day after the 2024 election will be riveting conversation with Ashley and Paul and will be cathartic for us all! Nonpaywalled version of Jim's Wired piece: https://www.wired.com/story/californi... Today's Substack (non paywalled) https://fallows.substack.com/p/electi... Nick Lemann in the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20... #Evangelicalish #ReligiousRightReligiouslyWrong #postevangelical #UnconventionalPastor #GodIsNOTmadAtYou #MindRenewal #Rethink @UnconventionalPastorPaul #WellBeing #Deconstruction #reconstruction
James Fallows once served as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter and now writes 'Breaking the News' on Substack and has a new article about California's promising future in WIRED magazine. Fallows is a longtime book and magazine writer, whose most recent of 12 books, "Our Towns," co-authored with his wife Deborah Fallows, was a national best-seller and the basis of a 2021 HBO documentary. His perspective, the day after the 2024 election will be riveting conversation with Ashley and Paul and will be cathartic for us all! - Nonpaywalled version of Jim's Wired piece: https://www.wired.com/story/california-will-keep-moving-the-world-forward/?utm_source=rfaf - Today's Substack (non paywalled) https://fallows.substack.com/p/election-countdown-the-day-after - Nick Lemann in the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/11/04/bidenomics-is-starting-to-transform-america-why-has-no-one-noticed #Evangelicalish #ReligiousRightReligiouslyWrong #postevangelical #UnconventionalPastor #GodIsNOTmadAtYou #MindRenewal #Rethink @UnconventionalPastorPaul #WellBeing #Deconstruction #reconstruction
On October 10th —25 days ahead of the 2024 presidential election—Ten Across founder Duke Reiter and veteran political correspondent James Fallows sat down to discuss journalism's role in American democracy today. Fallows has been a notable observer of this dynamic since at least 1996, when he published Breaking the News, a book which described the origins of the public's mistrust of the news media. Fallows believed as much then as now that most political journalism is a source of entertainment focused on the gamesmanship of policymaking, rather than practical information for civically engaged citizens. This disconnect has only grown as many local news publications have proven unable to adapt to the digital age, leaving many communities to become ‘news deserts.' Together with his wife Deborah, both have sought to alleviate distrust of the media and the related knowledge gaps by reporting from small towns in their book and HBO documentary Our Towns. Their work has led them to conclude that the national media lacks sufficient capacity or interest to provide a platform for all the complexity and ideological nuance found among the voting populace. They now operate the Our Towns Civic Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to uncovering stories of civic renewal and local success. In this live conversation recorded at the Arizona State University campus in Tempe, Duke Reiter and James Fallows discuss how the imperfect barometer of national-scale journalism can shape citizen behaviors and tensions between the major parties, especially in an election year. WATCH THIS DISCUSSION on the Ten Across YouTube channel.Fact check of today's episode:The Barry Goldwater Range Complex located in Arizona's Gila Bend is incorrectly referred to as the John McCain Bombing Range in this discussion. Relevant links and resources: James Fallows | Substack: Breaking the News Breaking the News (Fallows, 1996) Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America (Fallows, James and Deborah Fallows, 2018) “A Kansas town offers transportation for voters but many are unaware” (NBC News, 2018) “Why Phoenix is the ‘Most American City' with George Packer” (Ten Across Conversations, 2024)
Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 800 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Check out StandUpwithPete.com to learn more James Fallows is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. Please consider subscribing to his Substack Newsletter He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the 2018 book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which was a national best seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary. James Fallows is based in Washington, D.C., as a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for more than 40 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Shanghai, Beijing, and London. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and as a Fellow of the American Geographical Society. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of U.S. News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. Fallows won the National Magazine Award for his 2002 story “Iraq: The Fifty-First State?” warning about the consequences of invading Iraq; he has been a finalist four other times. He has also won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book National Defense and an N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America foundation. His books Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009) are based on his writings for The Atlantic. Before Our Towns, his most recent book was China Airborne (2012). He is married to Deborah Fallows, the author of the book Dreaming in Chinese. Together from 2013 to 2017 they traveled across the United States for their American Futures project, which led to Our Towns. They have two married sons and five grandchildren. Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the email button above. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation—but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. Jeff Jarvis is the author of What Would Google Do? and Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way we Work and Live. He has blogged at Buzzmachine.com about media, technology, and life's irritations since 2001. Jarvis directs the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He writes occasionally for the Guardian and HuffingtonPost. You can see and hear Jeff on "This Week In Google" In prior lives, Jarvis was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; president and creative director of Advance.net (online arm of Advance Publications); Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner. Jeff's list experts https://twitter.com/i/lists/1237834151694303234 https://buzzmachine.com/ Check out all things Jon Carroll Follow and Support Pete Coe Pete on YouTube Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page
James Fallows has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic for more than thirty-five years, reporting from China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and across the United States. Winner of the National Book Award and National Magazine Award, he's the author of twelve books and his work has appeared in numerous publications and on public-radio. For two years he was President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter.Deborah Fallows is a linguist and writer. The author of Dreaming in Chinese and A Mother's Work, she has written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The New York Times, among others and has worked at the Pew Research Center, Oxygen Media, and Georgetown University.Following the success of their NYTimes bestselling book Our Towns and HBO documentary based on their reporting on around 50 towns around the country, they formed the Our Towns Civic Foundation to promote reporting from under-served areas across the US, connect innovators and give Americans a fuller and more realistic picture of their country's challenges and opportunities.Our Towns (HBO Movie): https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/our-townsOur Towns (book): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550194/our-towns-by-james-fallows-and-deborah-fallows/ Our Towns Civic Foundation: https://www.ourtownsfoundation.org/ Our Towns Civic Foundation is a new non-profit organization that promotes reporting from under-served areas across the United States, to connect innovators dealing with the problems of this era, and gives Americans a fuller and more realistic picture of their countries challenges and opportunities."Deb Fallows, Dreaming in Chinese https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/dreaming-in-chinese-9780802779144/Deb Fallows, A Mother's Work https://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Work-Deborah-Fallows/dp/0395362180Jim Fallows, More Like Us https://www.amazon.com/More-like-Strengths-Traditional-Challenge/dp/B0010HBVYQOther books https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/8383/james-fallows/ Substack: https://fallows.substack.com/Photo © Michael Shay Polara Studio
James Fallows has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic for more than thirty-five years, reporting from China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and across the United States. Winner of the National Book Award and National Magazine Award, he's the author of twelve books and his work has appeared in numerous publications and on public-radio. For two years he was President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter.Deborah Fallows is a linguist and writer. The author of Dreaming in Chinese and A Mother's Work, she has written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The New York Times, among others and has worked at the Pew Research Center, Oxygen Media, and Georgetown University.Following the success of their NYTimes bestselling book Our Towns and HBO documentary based on their reporting on around 50 towns around the country, they formed the Our Towns Civic Foundation to promote reporting from under-served areas across the US, connect innovators and give Americans a fuller and more realistic picture of their country's challenges and opportunities.Our Towns (HBO Movie): https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/our-townsOur Towns (book): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550194/our-towns-by-james-fallows-and-deborah-fallows/ Our Towns Civic Foundation: https://www.ourtownsfoundation.org/ Our Towns Civic Foundation is a new non-profit organization that promotes reporting from under-served areas across the United States, to connect innovators dealing with the problems of this era, and gives Americans a fuller and more realistic picture of their countries challenges and opportunities."Deb Fallows, Dreaming in Chinese https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/dreaming-in-chinese-9780802779144/Deb Fallows, A Mother's Work https://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Work-Deborah-Fallows/dp/0395362180Jim Fallows, More Like Us https://www.amazon.com/More-like-Strengths-Traditional-Challenge/dp/B0010HBVYQOther books https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/8383/james-fallows/ Substack: https://fallows.substack.com/Photo © Michael Shay Polara Studio
James Fallows has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic for more than thirty-five years, reporting from China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and across the United States. Winner of the National Book Award and National Magazine Award, he's the author of twelve books and his work has appeared in numerous publications and on public-radio. For two years he was President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter.Deborah Fallows is a linguist and writer. The author of Dreaming in Chinese and A Mother's Work, she has written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The New York Times, among others and has worked at the Pew Research Center, Oxygen Media, and Georgetown University.Following the success of their NYTimes bestselling book Our Towns and HBO documentary based on their reporting on around 50 towns around the country, they formed the Our Towns Civic Foundation to promote reporting from under-served areas across the US, connect innovators and give Americans a fuller and more realistic picture of their country's challenges and opportunities.Our Towns (HBO Movie): https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/our-townsOur Towns (book): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550194/our-towns-by-james-fallows-and-deborah-fallows/ Our Towns Civic Foundation: https://www.ourtownsfoundation.org/ Our Towns Civic Foundation is a new non-profit organization that promotes reporting from under-served areas across the United States, to connect innovators dealing with the problems of this era, and gives Americans a fuller and more realistic picture of their countries challenges and opportunities."Deb Fallows, Dreaming in Chinese https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/dreaming-in-chinese-9780802779144/Deb Fallows, A Mother's Work https://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Work-Deborah-Fallows/dp/0395362180Jim Fallows, More Like Us https://www.amazon.com/More-like-Strengths-Traditional-Challenge/dp/B0010HBVYQOther books https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/8383/james-fallows/ Substack: https://fallows.substack.com/Photo © Michael Shay Polara Studio
Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 800 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Check out StandUpwithPete.com to learn more Today's sponsor is Indeed.com/Standup Wajahat Ali is a columnist at The Daily Beast and a Senior Fellow at The Western States Center and Auburn Seminary. He has previously been a New York Times contributing op-ed writer, CNN commentator, host for Huff Post, and co-host of Al Jazeera America's The Stream. He is also a recovering attorney and playwright. He is currently working on his first book, "Go Back To Where You Came From: And, Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American" scheduled for Spring 2022 publication. He makes Pakistani food and Lego sets "for his kids" during his free time. Listen to him Co Host Democracy-ish with Danielle Moodie You can send him hate mail at wajahatmali@protonmail.com James Fallows is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. Please consider subscribing to his Substack Newsletter He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the 2018 book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which was a national best seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary. James Fallows is based in Washington, D.C., as a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for more than 40 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Shanghai, Beijing, and London. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and as a Fellow of the American Geographical Society. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of U.S. News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. Fallows won the National Magazine Award for his 2002 story “Iraq: The Fifty-First State?” warning about the consequences of invading Iraq; he has been a finalist four other times. He has also won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book National Defense and an N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America foundation. His books Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009) are based on his writings for The Atlantic. Before Our Towns, his most recent book was China Airborne (2012). He is married to Deborah Fallows, the author of the book Dreaming in Chinese. Together from 2013 to 2017 they traveled across the United States for their American Futures project, which led to Our Towns. They have two married sons and five grandchildren. Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the email button above. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation—but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. Check out all things Jon Carroll Follow and Support Pete Coe Follow and Support Gareth Sever Pete on YouTube Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page
James and Deborah Fallows, journalists and coauthors of “Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America,” delivered this forum address on February 15, 2022. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
James and Deborah Fallows spent four years crisscrossing the United States in a small plane, visiting dozens of small towns. The stories they found were surprising—and entirely contrary to the narrative we've all read about in the news. They saw communities engaged in a vigorous process of economic renewal—a stunning portrait, in sum, of an America reinventing itself, literally from the ground up. They published their findings in “Our Towns: a 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America,” (Penguin Random House, 2018) and produced an HBO documentary of the same name in 2021. They also founded Our Towns Civic Foundation, a nonprofit initiative that continues their work. Because their story overlaps so forcefully with the theme of our Winter 2022 issue, “Reviving Our Abandoned Small Towns”, we snagged Jim and Deb for a sit-down interview with Todd Oppenheimer, founder and executive director of The Craftsmanship Initiative. This episode is part of the series of “Artisan Interviews,” produced by Craftsmanship Quarterly, in which we bring you conversations with the artisans behind the stories, and with those who write about them. Written by CRAFTSMANSHIP EDITORS Introduction by CHRIS EGUSA Narrated by TODD OPPENHEIMER WITH JAMES & DEBORAH FALLOWS Produced by CHRIS EGUSA
Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 800 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Check out StandUpwithPete.com to learn more All this month and next I will be promoting GiveWell.org and I hope you will consider sending them a donation. They will match new donors up to $250! Please go to GiveWell.org/StandUp Get your holiday gifts from one of the sponsors of the show! GetQuip.com/STANDUP Indeed.com/STANDUP and start a store or shop at Shopify.com/Standup James Fallows is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. Please consider subscribing to his Substack Newsletter He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the 2018 book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which was a national best seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary. James Fallows is based in Washington, D.C., as a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for more than 40 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Shanghai, Beijing, and London. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and as a Fellow of the American Geographical Society. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of U.S. News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. Fallows won the National Magazine Award for his 2002 story “Iraq: The Fifty-First State?” warning about the consequences of invading Iraq; he has been a finalist four other times. He has also won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book National Defense and an N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America foundation. His books Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009) are based on his writings for The Atlantic. Before Our Towns, his most recent book was China Airborne (2012). He is married to Deborah Fallows, the author of the book Dreaming in Chinese. Together from 2013 to 2017 they traveled across the United States for their American Futures project, which led to Our Towns. They have two married sons and five grandchildren. Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the email button above. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation—but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a historian and commentator on fascism, authoritarian leaders, and propaganda — and the threats these present to democracies. Subscribe to her newsletter at Lucid.substack.com As author or editor of seven books with over 100 op-eds and essays in media outlets including CNN, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post, she brings historical perspective to her analyses of current events. Her insight into the authoritarian playbook has made her an expert source for television, radio, podcasts, and online events around the globe. Ben-Ghiat is Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University and an Advisor to Protect Democracy. She is also a historical consultant for film and television productions. She is a big fan of electronic music, which is her preferred soundtrack while writing. She practices yoga several times a week. Ben-Ghiat's work has been supported by Fulbright, Guggenheim, and other fellowships. Her books Fascist Modernities and Italian Fascism's Empire Cinema detail what happens to societies when authoritarian governments take hold, and explore the appeal of strongmen to collaborators and followers. Growing up in Pacific Palisades, California, where many intellectuals who fled Nazism resettled, sparked her interest in the subject. With Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present, which is now available she offers a blueprint for understanding and resisting authoritarianism. Check out all things Jon Carroll Follow and Support Pete Coe Pete on YouTube Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page
For Today's podcast I had the honour of interviewing a very distinguished guest. Benjamin Zephaniah is best known as one of Britain's favourite poets. He is also a political activist, playwright and novelist who has been listed as one of Britain's 50 greatest postwar writers by the Times newspaper. One of the lesser known aspects of Benjamin's life is his interest in foreign languages and in particular Mandarin. In his Autobiography, the life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah, he writes about his decades long exploration of the Chinese language and culture. I wanted to find out more about why he took on the challenge of learning Chinese, how he went about doing so and why he believes language learning can be a powerful tool against bigotry and war. Links: For more blogs & podcasts: imlearningmandarin.com Benjamin's Website: https://benjaminzephaniah.com/ Benjamin's autobiography: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Rhymes-Benjamin-Zephaniah-Autobiography/dp/1471168921 Dreaming in Chinese, Deborah Fallows: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dreaming-Chinese-Deborah-Fallows/dp/1780720858
Southern and rural parts of the U.S. are often overlooked in the national media, giving a limited view of some of the most pressing challenges facing our nation today. Ten Across Founder Duke Reiter talks to veteran journalists James and Deborah Fallows, who have recently traveled the country reporting from America's small towns to explore the nation's growing fragmentation and how we can look beyond artificial boundaries. What does the southern portion of the U.S. tell us about economic opportunity in our country? What does infrastructure really mean in the 21st century? How does the future of democracy look outside of our big cities? And how can these insights help us to better understand the critical issues the nation and our capacity to plan more effectively for the future?For more information about the Ten Across initiative visit www.10across.com.
In their new film for HBO "Our Towns," Boston filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan look at how small towns across America are reinventing themselves. The husband and wife team join Heath to discuss their working relationship, how the focus of the film shifted after the pandemic, and their partnership with reporters James and Deborah Fallows, who are featured in the film.
Our Towns - Co-directors Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan From Academy Award nominated filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan's comes Our Towns. It is a moving and uplifting portrait of America and how the rise of civic and economic reinvention is transforming small cities and towns across the country. Based on the bestselling book “Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America” by journalists James and Deborah Fallows, the visually stunning feature documentary spotlights ingenious local initiatives and explores how a sense of community and common language of change can help people and towns find a different path to the future. In 2011, the Fallows created a blogpost for The Atlantic asking their readers to share compelling stories about their towns – from economic setbacks to local struggles or achievements – that have been overlooked by the national press. Within a week, they received over 1,000 responses. For the next five years, they traveled the United States exploring the changes taking place across small town America for what would become their bestselling book. In 2018, Ascher and Jordan joined them to revisit eight of those cities, including San Bernardino, CA; Sioux Falls, SD; Columbus, MS; Eastport, ME; Charleston, WV; and Bend, OR. Our Towns introduces us to a wide range of civic leaders, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, students, and more, witnessing their love for their communities and the innovative ways they are improving them. The film provides an expansive perspective on America that finds unexpected connections between personal stories, community actions, and the arc of history. Although filmed before the pandemic, OUR TOWNS speaks to how the country, and by extension the world, can find a way forward. For more on the April 13 HBO premiere go to: hbo.com/our-towns For news and updates go to: westcityfilms.com/ourtowns
Directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, the HBO documentary OUR TOWNS is a remarkable portrait of America and how the rise of civic and economic reinvention is transforming small cities and towns across the country. Based on the bestselling book “Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America” by journalists James and Deborah Fallows, the visually stunning feature documentary spotlights ingenious local initiatives and explores how a sense of community and common language of change can help people and towns find a different path to the future. In 2011, the Fallows created a blogpost for The Atlantic asking their readers to share compelling stories about their towns – from economic setbacks to local struggles or achievements – that have been overlooked by the national press. Within a week, they received over 1,000 responses. For the next five years, they traveled the United States exploring the changes taking place across small town America for what would become their bestselling book. In 2018, filmmakers Ascher and Jordan joined them to revisit eight of those cities, including San Bernardino, CA; Sioux Falls, SD; Columbus, MS; Eastport, ME; Charleston, WV; and Bend, OR. The film introduces us to a wide range of civic leaders, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, students, and more, witnessing their love for their communities and the innovative ways they are improving them. The film provides an expansive perspective on America that finds unexpected connections between personal stories, community actions, and the arc of history. Although filmed before the pandemic, OUR TOWNS speaks to how the country, and by extension the world, can find a way forward. Premieres on HBO April 13, 2021. Continues on HBO MAX.97 minutes. A West City Films production for HBO.
Don't miss Quint's delightful conversation with James Fallows and Deborah Fallows, authors of New York Times bestseller Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America. Their book explores they learned when they hopped on a small plane and visited towns across the country where good things were happening that were not necessarily shown on the evening news. In this podcast they discuss some of these findings, as well as how the COVID pandemic has given communities a greater sense of urgency to fix their issues. A big point of discussion is the patterns of success Deborah and James see in cities and regions working to renew themselves. For example, they realize they must attract young people and make everyone feel welcome, regardless of background, political views, orientation, etc. They discuss the need for truly engaged citizens, who don't just “consume” what the community has to offer but who feel a sense of responsibility for it. And they zoom in on the collaborations between institutions and also small businesses that create a lot of synergy and trust.You'll be interested to hear about the upcoming HBO documentary based on James's and Deborah's book. And you'll be uplifted by their optimistic mindset: while America is surely going through a hard time now, we've been through many other hard times before. We can achieve renewal and reconstruction. It is up to us to make it happen.James and Deborah will also speak at EntreCon, our virtual business and leadership conference held Wednesday and Thursday, November 18 & 19, 2020. Click here to register.
In this episode, the first page of three non-fiction books will be read:The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway,A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins, andOur Towns by James Fallows and Deborah Fallows
A major contributing factor to Trump's success in 2016 was his love-hate relationship with the mainstream media. Whether it was giving the then-candidate a disproportionate amount of free press, or an unwillingness to be critical in a misguided attempt to appear balanced, news agencies everywhere unwittingly aided and abetted the President's rise to power. Now journalist James Fallows (https://www.ourtownsbook.com/about/view/james-fallows) argues they have neither learned their lesson nor are they willing to be held accountable for their irresponsible behavior. Also, author Deborah Fallows (https://www.ourtownsbook.com/about/view/deborah-fallows) suggests that in remaining hyper-focused on the "sport" of national politics, little attention is ever given to the real needs and interests of communities outside urban coastal areas.
Author Deborah Fallows and journalist James Fallows spent years traveling to small cities and towns outside America's major population centers in order to research their national bestseller "Our Towns A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America." In following up with those communities recently, they are able to share how individual leaders and local groups have stepped up to deal with the growing coronavirus outbreak in spite of the lack of guidance from higher levels of government. Al and James also ponder what a candidate like Joe Biden can do in a situation as dire as this.
We’re excited to welcome you to our Building Opportunity in Delaware podcast! How can we build opportunity and strengthen community for all? Over the next eight weeks, DCF President & CEO Stuart Comstock-Gay talks with Delawareans who are building opportunity through the arts, faith communities, libraries and everything in between. Our first episode features James & Deborah Fallows, authors of Our Towns: A 100, 000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America. The Fallows joined us in November as the guest speakers for the DCF’s 2019 Building Opportunity Keynote, when they also had a chance to visit Wilmington revitalization projects downtown, on the West Side, and in Riverside. They later featured the Our Lens Challenge, a photo contest for Delaware high school students hosted by the DCF and community partners, in an article for The Atlantic. You can listen and subscribe on Apple, Spotify. and Google Podcasts.
Did Donald Trump order the #Soliemani killing to #WagTheDog? MSNBC Analyst & US Navy combat vet, Malcolm Nance explains the #IranCrisis to #StrangeDaysPodcast + The Atlantic's James and Deborah Fallows take us inside #OurTowns across America!
James Fallows & Deborah Fallows, Authors “Our Towns: A 1000,000 Mile Journey Into the Heart Of America” Join me as I talk with the author of Our Towns: A 1000,000 Mile Journey Into the Heart Of America” A featured book at the Miami Book Fair, a best seller, and a good read. It’s a fascinating look at how towns across America are re-building with community spirit, innovative ideas, and local business leaders.
Book Bites are quick, five minute looks at a book from readers. Try a new book this week! Today’s book is Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language, by Deborah Fallows . Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.
S4 E21: Library Edition, Part 3: In this special edition of our podcast This Is the Author, we’re celebrating National Library Week by asking authors to share some of their favorite library memories with us. Listen to authors A.S. King, Cathy Guisewite, Deborah Fallows, Jill Schlesinger, Steven Johnson, Pamela Druckerman, Eliza Kennedy, Heather Turgeon, and Alexia Vernon share why libraries are so special to them. Enjoy.
Simon Majumdar is a world renowned broadcaster, author and cook who has dedicated the second half of his time on this planet to fulfill his ambition to “Go Everywhere. Eat Everything.” He also loves Fresno's food and has visited the Fresno Food Expo (now the California Food Expo) for the past several years. Hear our Craig Scharton and Paul Swearengin talk to Simon about his podcast Eat My Globe and his view of his love for Fresno. Sometimes it takes an outside view to see ourselves as good as we are and Simon Majumdar encourages Fresno to like itself! Thanks to our Title Sponsor Terry's House and please support us on our Patreon Page and our Two Guys Facebook Page. If you haven't heard us talk to other outside voices of their view of Fresno, check out our conversation with Jim and Deborah Fallows, author of the book Our Towns.
We talk with James and Deborah Fallows, authors of the book Our Towns. The Fallows travel the country looking for cities where transformation is occurring and featured a chapter on Fresno and the amazing things they see happening here. What will it take to see Fresno become all it can be? Paul Swearengin and Craig Scharton share their thoughts. You can buy the book Our Towns here. Or read James' latest articles at The Atlantic.
A new direction on tech, courtesy of India; Silicon Valley should prepare for a new power dynamic; Beyond the Beltway: the state of the real America; Journalists James and Deborah Fallows have been traversing America & visiting small cities & towns in their single-engine plane for years; Fallows: if a town or city has a craft brewing industry, it gets half point on our scale of "signs of civic success"!; Brill: this job training program takes people who average $18k/year and 11 months later they graduate into jobs that pay $85k/year/ Brill: the U.S. is learning the lesson that you need leaders who are qualified, prepared and have answers/ Brill: If enough water mains break ad enough bridges collapse at the same time, America will understand the need to spend $$$; Deborah Fallows: When we went into towns across the country, we never asked about national politics & nobody brought it up; What America can learn from other countries about education; Schleicher: Chinese parents spend on education. American, European parents spend on consumption; At the OECD, Andreas Schleicher oversees the PISA exams which test students in 72 countries to evacuate educational systems; Schleicher: in the world's best educational systems, neither wealth or background matter to performance; Schleicher: The least wealthy 10% of students in Shanghai do as well on the PISA math test as America's wealthiest 10%; Ten steps to better democracy; In search of lost time, why medieval peasants understood time better than we do; Rovelli: Trains were the main reason for the standardization of time; The mystery of time, Rovelli: there's no more time up there than down here; Rovelli: time is tied to everything that makes us suffer; Physicist Carlo Rovelli on how time shapes our identities
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the number and scope of crises we constantly see flashing across our phones and television screens. In fact, our brains – and our hearts – aren’t built to process conflicts on such a massive scale. In this episode, Arthur looks at ‘thinking small,’ the notion that by focusing on what is individual, local, and within our sphere of influence, we can paradoxically bring about more change, disagree more productively, and become happier people. Hear conversations with Paul Slovic, Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon, and James and Deborah Fallows, who share stories from their journey across the country for their book “Our Towns.”
James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He, and his wife Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the forthcoming book, Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America, a vivid portrait of the civic and economic reinvention taking place in America, town by town and generally out of view of the national media.Traveling across America in a single-engine prop airplane, the Fallowses have visited dozens of towns—meeting hundreds of civic leaders, workers, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, public servants, librarians, business people, city planners, students, and entrepreneurs—to take the pulse and understand the prospects of American towns from coast to coast. The book includes a chapter on Louisville and focuses on GE's FirstBuild “microfactory.”
James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He, and his wife Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the forthcoming book, Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America, a vivid portrait of the civic and economic reinvention taking place in America, town by town and generally out of view of the national media.Traveling across America in a single-engine prop airplane, the Fallowses have visited dozens of towns—meeting hundreds of civic leaders, workers, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, public servants, librarians, business people, city planners, students, and entrepreneurs—to take the pulse and understand the prospects of American towns from coast to coast. The book includes a chapter on Louisville and focuses on GE's FirstBuild “microfactory.”
On today's episode we feature two conversations with presenters from Week Two of the Chautauqua season, themed "American Identity." First is a discussion with James and Deborah Fallows, who took the Amphitheater stage on the Fourth of July to present on their new book, Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America. Then, Taína Caragol, who opened the week of lectures on July 2, joins us at the 47:00 mark to expand upon her work as a curator at the National Portrait Gallery. For the last five years, Jim and Deb have been traveling across America in a single-engine prop airplane and reporting on the people, organizations and ideas re-shaping the country. As part of their “City Makers: American Futures” project in partnership with The Atlantic and APM’s “Marketplace,” the Fallowses visited smaller and medium-sized cities, meeting civic leaders, factory workers, recent immigrants, and young entrepreneurs to take the pulse and understand the prospects of places that usually draw notice only after a disaster or during a political campaign. Our Towns is the story of their journey — and an account of a country busy remaking itself, despite the challenges and paralysis of national politics. Jim is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and was editor of the US News & World Report. He has also authored several books himself, including China Airborne and National Defense, which won the American Book Award for nonfiction. Jim also worked as the chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter for two years. Deb is a linguist who speaks six languages, and the author of A Mother’s Work and Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Languages. Before her travels abroad she was an assistant dean at Georgetown University and wrote about education, travel, work and women in publications such as The Atlantic, National Geographic and Newsweek. Follow them on Twitter at @JamesFallows and @FallowsDeb, and read The Chautauquan Daily's recap of their Amphitheater lecture here: http://chqdaily.com…. Taína Caragol is the curator of painting and sculpture, and of Latino art and history, at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, where she and her colleagues tell the story of America through portraits of people who have shaped it. Regarding her role specific to Latino art and history, Taína has said, “When people are missing from a history museum, the visitor gets the sense that it’s because they haven’t made an impact on our history. My priority is to make sure that the Latinos who have had a significant role are well represented throughout our collections and in our exhibitions.” Among the many exhibitions Taína has curated are “Portraiture Now: Staging the Self,” and “One Life: Dolores Huerta,” which has been expanded and redesigned as a traveling exhibition this year. Taína previously worked as the curator of education at the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, as consultant of art and archival collections for Lord Cultural Resources, and Latin American Bibliographer for the The Museum of Modern Art. She also co-curated an exhibition about the Young lords, Puerto Rican activists from the 1960s, for the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Follow her on Twitter at @Playacreciente, and read The Chautauquan Daily's recap of her Amphitheater lecture here: http://chqdaily.com….
Despite bitter partisanship and political paralysis in Washington, local democracy is alive in well in many towns and cities across the country.That's the surprising finding in "Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America," by journalist James Fallows of The Atlantic magazine and his wife, writer and linguist Deborah Fallows. In this episode, part two of our conversation with James, we look at the ways many local business owners, city planners, educators and citizens have worked in pragmatic and inventive ways to improve life in their communities.We discuss public/private partnerships, the enormous value provided by community colleges in the changing jobs market, infrastructure projects, and innovative ways downtown districts have been revived. “The good news is the solutions to our civic problems already exist,” said opinion writer David Brooks in a recent column, praising “Our Towns.” “We just need to take these civic programs and this governing philosophy and nationalize them. We need to transform these local stories into a coherent national story.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Congress sank to a dismal 10% approval rating in a new poll. Most Americans believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction. But ask people about their own lives and local communities, and you are likely to get a very different answer.According to a Gallup poll, well over 80% of Americans are satisfied in general with the way their personal lives are going.Despite negative media coverage of "fly-over country" and the "rust belt", exciting things are happening in towns and cities across the country."This still can be the country people would like to think it is," says well-known journalist James Fallows of The Atlantic magazine and co-author of "Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America." He says that most people don't realize how fast the country is moving toward becoming a better version of itself.The book and our interview offer a surprising portrait of the civic and economic reinvention taking place. James and his wife Deborah Fallows wrote the book together, traveling to 31 towns and cities over four years in their single engine plane.The America they saw is deeply conscious of its problems-- from the appalling opioid epidemic to decades of economic dislocation. But many communities are coming up with practical, lasting solutions, in contrast to the rigid paralysis of national politics. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
James and Deborah Fallows, authors of Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America, and Hillary Frey, executive editor of HuffPost, discussed contemporary issues facing the heart of America with Ellen Fitzpatrick, professor of history at the University of New Hampshire.
Author of the Frank Adversego Thriller Series Interview starts at 11:14 and ends at 35:51 “Alexa's pretty primitive. I think it's very concerning from a cybersecurity point of view, because people have already learned how to spoof Alexa. Just a few days ago they came up with the equivalent of a dog whistle-type command that you couldn't hear, but Alexa could. Someone could turn it on and off.” News “An Amazon Echo recorded a family's conversation, then sent it to a random person in their contacts, report says” by Hamza Shaban at The Washington Post - May 24, 2018 “Don't Freak Out About That Amazon Alexa Eavesdropping Situation” by Lily Hay Newman at Wired - May 24, 2018 “HBG, Amazon Partner on Narrative Content for Echo Device” by Calvin Reid at Publishers Weekly - May 22, 2018 “Are ebooks dying or thriving? The answer is yes” by Thu-Huong Ha at Quartz - May 13, 2018 Tech Tip Use Household Profiles to Share Your Fire Tablet - Amazon.com Interview with Andrew Updegrove The Frank Adversego Thrillers by Andrew Updegrove at Amazon.com The Blockchain Affair (chapter by chapter, beginning with Prologue and Chapter 1) Andrew-Updegrove.com Content Books on Artificial Intelligence recommended by Andy Updegrove: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies 1st Edition by Nick Bostrom Thinking Machines: The Quest for Artificial Intelligence--and Where It's Taking Us Next by Luke Dormehi The Quest for Artificial Intelligence by Nils J. Nilsson Podcast interviews with James and Deborah Fallows, authors of Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America: Max Linsky of the Longform Podcast, Ezra Klein of The Ezra Klein Show, John Dickerson of the CBS This Morning Podcast, Sam Wang of the WooCast Politics & Polls podcast, and Chuck Todd of Meet the Press podcast. Next Week's Guest Nick Wingfield, former tech reporter at The New York Times, currently senior editor at The Information Outro Thanks to Stephen Campbell of The Author Biz podcast for generously helping me meet the deadline for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect in Europe today. I modeled my new Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy on Stephen's website. Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!
Dodge City, Kansas and Erie, Pennsylvania may have something in common. That's just one surprise in “Our Towns,” a new book by James and Deborah Fallows. The veteran Atlantic magazine correspondent and his scholarly wife spent two weeks in each of 25 different cities. Their search for America's character provides anecdotes, comparisons and distinctions after a journey of 100,000 miles.
After four years, 31 cities and about 100,000 miles in a small private plane, Deborah and James Fallows are back home with a reassured outlook on America's future.
After four years, 31 cities and about 100,000 miles in a small private plane, Deborah and James Fallows are back home with a reassured outlook on America’s future.
The conventional wisdom is that America’s rural communities and small cities are sliding into decline, despair, and disconnection. Anger, frustration, and insularity in such places are widely seen as the fuel behind President Trump’s election and a rise in white nationalism and racism. But a more nuanced look at cities like Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Eastport, Maine; Columbus, Mississippi, and Clarkson, Washington can reveal a very different picture, with local communities often demonstrating robust civic life. Are these places really so desperately disconnected from the 21st-century economy—or do they feel closer to the rest of the world through growing trade and advanced technology? Are they turning their backs on a changing nation, or demonstrating how to live together as the country diversifies? Why doesn’t the media cover more of their stories of innovation and renewal? James Fallows and Deborah Fallows, co-authors of "Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America," visited Zócalo to discuss what they found in their travels across the U.S. in a single-engine prop airplane. The event, titled “Are Small Towns Reinventing America?” and held at The RedZone at Gensler in downtown Los Angeles, was moderated by Joe Mathews, Zócalo’s California and Innovation Editor.
Barbara Ehrenreich ruminates on the unpredictability of our body's cells and shares her philosophy of living a life she enjoys rather than extending a life she doesn't (4:10); Nomi Prins calls out the role of the central banking system and the Federal Reserve in the 2008 financial crisis and suggests potential healthy economic alternatives (10:00); Freeman Dyson reconciles scientific models with the natural world around us and asserts that the most interesting parts of science are the mysteries (17:15); and Steve Scher interviews James and Deborah Fallows about their journey through small American towns that are surviving and thriving (20:45). Hosts Jini Palmer and Steve Scher select standout moments from the previous two weeks of events and look forward to the next.
Authors of Our Towns: A 100,000-mile Journey Into the Heart of America Interview starts at 9:43 and ends at 39:14 “James Fallows: ‘Through my reportorial lifetime I've seen a number crises for the American system, which the U.S. has so far managed to muddle its way through. That does not guarantee continued muddling, but I personally am more heartened than I thought I would be by all this resilience around the country. So Deb, will we make it?' Deborah Fallows: ‘I'm going to say we'll make it. It's the generations that are coming up--it's their turn to help make this right now.” News “Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write” by Jean-Louis Gassée at Monday Note (Medium) - April 29, 2018 Jeff Bezos's Letters to Shareholders “Warren Buffett Says He Was Wrong About Google and Amazon” by David Z. Morris at Fortune - May 6, 2018 “Amazon is starting to scan customers' bodies in the name of online shopping” by Lulu Chang at Fox News - May 7, 2018 Interview with James Fallows and Deborah Fallows Our Towns: A 100,000-mile Journey Into the Heart of America “Where History is Being Made” by David Brooks at The New York Times - February 7, 2018 Books by James Fallows Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language by Deborah Fallows Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!
Some feel these are the worst of times, that we’re living in an America fraught with political discord and governmental dysfunction. But how bad is it in American towns? Writers James and Deborah Fallows traveled 100,000 miles across the country to find out. Using a single-engine prop airplane, the husband-wife team visited dozens of towns from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Allentown, Pennsylvania. They interviewed civic leaders, immigrants, educators, artists and more, turning their interviews into a book, “Our Towns,” released this week by Pantheon Books. James Fallows joins Julian Zelizer and Sam Wang in this episode to discuss the book and an account of a country busy remaking itself. James Fallows has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic for more than 35 years, reporting from China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe and across the United States. He is the author of eleven previous books. His work also has appeared in many other magazines and as public-radio commentaries since the 1980s. He has won a National Book Award and a National Magazine Award. For two years, he was President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter. Deborah Fallows is a linguist and writer who holds a Ph.D. in theoretical linguistics and is the author of two previous books. She has written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times and The Washington Monthly, and has worked at the Pew Research Center, Oxygen Media and Georgetown University. She and her husband have two sons and four grandchildren.
America is a treasured tapestry of towns and cities. On this week’s City Voice Podcast I’ve enlisted the help of James and Deborah Fallows. With their help, we hear about that tapestry. What does it really look like? Is it frayed? What does it's future look like? They spent the better part of five years immersing themselves in small and medium-sized town and cities across America. They did all this traveling in their small single engine airplane. The combination of both on the ground and birds-eye perspective gave them a unique look at America. The aerial insights inform how and why towns were built where they are and what their natural strengths are going forward. Getting to know the people on the ground gave them and now us a more immediate read on where America is and where it's likely headed. They are the authors of, Our Towns, A 100,000-Mile Journey Into The Heart Of America. Our Towns reads like a modern-day Lewis and Clark single-engine airplane travel log for Cond'e Naste. It’s also bit of an urban planning enthusiasts guide to placemaking in small to medium size American cities and towns, it’s a keen observer’s take on the fabric of America, it’s a reporter's account of economic development in the heartland, and it’s an America political analysis during the times of Presidents Barak Obama and Donald Trump. James Fallows has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic for more than thirty-five years, reporting from China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and across the United States. He is the author of eleven previous books. He has provided commentaries for NPR since the 1980s. For two years he was President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter. Deborah Fallows is a linguist and is the author of two previous books. She has written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, and The Washington Monthly, and has worked at the Pew Research Center, Oxygen Media, and Georgetown University. Thanks and don’t forget to subscribe to City Voice and share with your friends. SHOW LINKS "Our Towns" Amazon Link To Purchase the book James Fallows Deborah Fallows Their blog American Futures
"I think there were two ideas behind this book. One of them is simply the joy of exploration. Before Deb and I began these travels around the country we’d been living for a number of years in China. And there we had a bias in favor of just going whenever we could–on trains or buses or horses or yaks–to see remote things. We had the opportunity to do that in the U.S. because of our long background with a small airplane, so we thought: let’s try it here. The other, as time went on, was to sort of grab people by the lapels and tell them what we had seen." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/550194/our-towns/
In a February 2017 column, David Brooks wrote about "the Fallows Question, which I unfurl at dinner parties: If you could move to the place on earth where history is most importantly being made right now, where would you go?” The Fallows question is based on the life and work of Jim and Deborah Fallows. Jim is a national correspondent at the Atlantic; Deborah is a writer and linguist. When Japan looked like the future, they moved there to watch it happen; when software was eating the world, they moved to Seattle and Jim dove inside Microsoft; when China was on the rise, that was where they made their home. It’s a reason, when asked, that I’ve always named Jim Fallows as one of my few must-read writers: His journalism is thick with a wisdom that only comes from having immersed himself in many, many different lives. Over the past few years, however, the Fallows have believed the story is happening, well, here. They came to believe that the story America is telling about itself to itself — a story of national decline, of bitter political polarization, of rural resentment and coastal elitism and tribal identity and spiritual malaise — is wrong. And so they got in their plane (yes, Jim is a pilot too), and they spent years traveling the country, trying to see it more clearly by seeing its places more precisely. It has left them with a sense of hope that feels almost alien in this age. Their new book, Our Towns, is a travelogue of this journey and what it revealed to them about America. In this conversation, we talk about the optimism it left them with, as well as what they’ve learned designing their lives around adventure and travel, why they spent their honeymoon in a work camp in Ghana, how to make life feel longer, whether our political identities are our true identities, why Americans hate the media, and the reason libraries are more important than ever. I’ve always admired the Fallowses’ for both their work and their wisdom, and it was a pleasure, in this interview, to get to explore both. Deborah's recommended books: Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville Journals of Lewis and Clark edited by Bernard DeVoto James's recommended books: Grant by Ron Chernow Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Traveler, teller of tales, reviewer of eReaders Interview starts at 15:25 and ends at 41:53 “To be honest, I haven't met one person outside tech nerds like myself that use it [Kindle's X-Ray feature.] I very rarely use it. I kind of go ‘Let's see what this is about.” I think it takes away from the immersion of reading. If I'm interested in something I'll take a look at it later on, but during the reading process I don't really want to leave.” News Jeff Bezos interviewed in Berlin by Mathias Dopfner at Business Insider - April 28, 2018 The Post (2017) at Prime Video Personal History by Katharine Graham Tech Tip “Google's ‘Talk to Books' Might Have Just Changed Everything” by Bradley Metrock at Digital Book World - April 15, 2018 Talk to Books Content Amazon's new Prime Book Box program for young readers Interview with Séamus Bellamy Basic Kindle, Paperwhite, and Oasis Kobo Pocket Overdrive for Kobo ReMarkable tablet Seamus Bellamy articles at USA Today's Reviewed site, BoingBoing, Macworld and PCWorld Comments Click here for information about visiting Amazon's headquarters and the spheres in Seattle Next Week's Guest James Fallows and Deborah Fallows, authors of Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America, to be released on May 8, 2018 by Pantheon. (Note: this episode will be released on Wednesday to coincide with the book's release, instead of the usual episode upload on Friday.) Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!
We hear a lot of stories about the challenges people in distressed communities are facing, but we also want to hear stories about what communities are doing to come back. On this episode of Grapple, we discuss these ideas with longtime Atlantic magazine writers Deborah and James Fallows. The couple has been traveling around the Unites States for the last three years on a single-engine propeller plane to find out how American cities and towns have been putting themselves back together. Their project is called American Futures.
For the past year, Deborah and James Fallows have been flying their propeller airplane across the country, visiting smaller cities in the middle of economic, educational, or political turnarounds. From Maine to Mississippi, from inland California to Vermont, they have found trends at odds with, and more encouraging than, the national trends of bitter division and inability to solve big problems. They have reported on their findings in "The Atlantic" and via “Marketplace” radio, and they will share the latest surprises and future plans with us. Deborah Fallows, James Fallows, Kai Ryssdal
Guest speaker Deborah Fallows spent years absorbing the culture, politics and people of China. Having studied Chinese and having mastered fluency in multiple languages, Deborah relied on her background in linguistics to grasp the enormity of Chinese life through language. Yet, as she describes, little did she know how difficult communicating with people would be. This special event is sponsored with the UAA Confucius Institute and UAA Student Activities.
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