- I'm so glad to be here to see you.

I see you on the TV all the time.

Oh, - Glad to see you.

- I just wondered, as I'm sitting here thinking, I am a retired high school English teacher, lucky enough to work with Project-based curriculums.

And so when we would have a project, I would have four people in a team, and they had to go into the background of that author and they, we did everything from what was the religion like during his time, what was the government like?

What was, what was culture like?

And so then we would all get around a round table and share what we found.

And the conversations that that provided at that time were absolutely remarkable.

So I was wondering if you would ever think about doing what you have here in school?

- Yeah.

Is there a curriculum that sort of emerges from - This?

We're, we're putting together a curriculum around this and we're trying to open source it because it's used in, so first of all, thank you for your question.

- Sure.

- You're the kind of English teacher that I think every parent wants their children to, to find in school.

Right.

I was just blessed with this curriculum.

It's fantastic.

Yeah.

So we are, we know that we're used in hundreds of schools, and so we're trying to take what we, what teachers have learned in their classrooms to see if we can put together something that is more formal, but also nimble enough that they can make it work in whatever kind of environment that they actually happen to be in.

In some cases, they're using it just to have conversations.

In other cases, they're using it, the six word structure to help students with writing.

Yes.

You know, six word memoir, there's a, you know, to write your memoir, a who, what, where, when, and why.

Start with six words for each of those.

Yes.

And then build that out the prompts.

And then also to look at histories, because there are so many histories that emerge in these stories.

So, you know, I wound up learning about the war, this whole chapter in here about the war of 1862.

I grew up in Minnesota, didn't know about it, didn't learn about it in school, but learned about it from people who shared their stories.

I learned about what life was like after World War ii, what life was like for people who were in internment camps, what life was like at the border in El Paso, you know, around World War I, you know, it's just really interesting, the stories that surface when people can, can share their own stories.

So the short answer is yes.

You know, we're, we're working on something like that.

Super.

Thank - You so much.

Thank you.

Come on, come on up.

I, you know, you mentioned earlier the pushback against DEI, which obviously here in Texas, we know very well.

I wonder if there's an impediment to this becoming a curriculum for similar reasons.

Does anyone look at this and say, this is actually the thing we're trying to get out of the schools?

- I, I, you know, I suspect that this, my first book was banned actually, and the person who led it was a read legislator here in the state of Texas.

And I actually called this office several times because I was like, have you read the book?

'cause if you did, you would - Realize that didn't wanna talk to you - About this.

Yeah.

But you would realize that you learn a lot about not just my family, but about, I went and researched what it was like for white police officers in Birmingham, Alabama.

I told, like all kinds of sides of the story, and I suspect that some people won't.

But the thing that might inoculate us is that we tell all kinds of stories.

- Well, as you say, the vast majority of the responses actually came from people not all of whom agree on what the circumstance.

Sir, how are you?

Thank you.

Thank you for - Coming.

Thank you very much.

You mentioned that there are people that it is in their interest or groups, that it's in their interest to keep us divided or to keep people divided and not may, if the book talks about it, great.

I'll get the book and figure that out.

But can you give some examples of that?

Or, or, or, or that, that phenomena going on where there are forces at work where the goal is to keep people divided.

Who's involved with that?

- In, in politics, we absolutely see that at work.

If you look at what's happened in social media structures, - Yeah, - There's misinformation and disinformation that flows in different directions to try to keep people believing one thing on one side and believing something else.

On the other side, there are, you know, after the election, there were a number of people who got mysterious texts on their phone saying, show up at a cotton field, and you can begin picking at this particular time, because slavery is gonna return, obviously meant to just get inside and needle people and, and keep people, you know, divided.

There are, when I say people that will gain from that, there are people who will gain from that.

In terms of politics, there are people who will gain from that in, in terms of geography.

You know, if we keep people, we wanna keep this community for ourselves, we want, we're afraid that we might lose something, you know, the politics of aversion and the politics of, of risks.

So there, and this is not something that's new.

We saw this in it, it obviously in the civil rights era, but, but many times ahead of that, I mean, this is something that happened in New York, you know, when large waves of immigrants were coming from Greece and from Italy and from Ireland, and trying to, you know, America is a place where a lot of people, in fact, most of us came from someplace else.

- Somewhere else, right.

- And then figured out how to live with each other, even though we have a sort of system of fiefdoms and a system of tribalism.

And, and that is very powerful.

That is a very powerful force.

I think that there is something that's equally powerful is when, and I know this from this experience, is when we do this kind of work in places when people actually come together and you can bring people who don't agree, there is something, I don't wanna say magical, that happens, but something really potent happens when you can bring people and they can actually have an experience.

And they didn't spontaneously combust.

I secretly think that's one of the reasons we love sports, right?

I really do.

I mean, and I know where I'm at, so I understand how much you all are football down here, but we all come together on Saturdays and Sundays and Friday nights in, in here in Texas, and we all fly the same flag, and then often we return to our fiefdoms.

But for that golden three hours, you know, everybody's rooting for the same team.

- Yeah.

- And we have to figure out how I, and, and in my, I have this dream that there is a, an award, a Nobel type prize for people who actually figure out how to bring people together across - Difference.

Yeah.

Well, you know, you talk about that though, with the Thank you.

You, you talk about that in the book, at the, at the end of the book, you say, I no longer use the phrase common ground.

You're not necessarily speaking badly about people who are attempting to bring people together, but you actually have decided to go dark on that phrase.

Can you say, say in this, in the context of the conversation, we just had, say, say something about - That.

So I'm not fussing on anybody to uses the, the phrase common ground, but I, I have focused, I was doing this work at the Carnagie Museums in Pittsburgh.

- Yep.

- And if you've been to Pittsburgh, it is a city of bridges.

- Yep.

- And I looked out, and there are bridges and every, and I realize what we need right now are bridges.

- Yeah.

- That's what I, I focus my work on is bridge building.

And I use that metaphor because we're probably too divided and too fractured and too variated to figure out how we can all occupy common ground.

And also it's just, you know, how we all gonna fit.

So the idea of a bridge is that, you know, if you and your bridges in your life, if you think about the bridges that you cross, you usually cross in two directions.

You go, you go to work, you go travel someplace, you check things out, and then you come back to your, your comfort zone.

But you experience things when you're out in the world.

And the mind once exposed to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

And so if we can create enough bridges so people can at least see each other, and I know it's really hard.

I mean, I know Thanksgiving is on the horizon, you know, for a lot of you, Thanksgiving, for a lot of us, Thanksgiving might be a little, you know, there might be some indigestion and not just from the meal, but we have to figure out how, how to do that because we do need to figure out how to move forward as a country.

And this us and them Hatfields and McCoys, you know, I I I think Americans are also exhausted, exhausted at waking up with their fist balled up every - Day.

But of course, you know, I I I, I agree with you and I promise we'll come to your question.

This election in some ways was litigated along those very lines.

You know, we have to end the drama law, right?

We all heard that we have to get, get ourselves past this point where every day is another fight.

- Right.

- And the country voted for fighting.

- I, you know, again, I'm, I'm afraid of being too simplistic.

The country voted for someone who was a pugilist.

I'm not sure the country voted for continued fighting.

Because when the waters start to rise, when the tornadoes come, when they start talking about your social security, which, you know, let's look at what happens there with the aging of America, - When we send the entire workforce that's supporting agriculture and hospitality and construction somewhere else, and the economy collapses.

We'll see whether choosing a pugel list was the right decision.

- Well, and, and I think that people will fight for their families and they'll fight for their future.

I don't know that they necessarily want the people who lead us to continue fighting each other.

- Well, we're gonna, we're gonna get a real time simulation - Of that, aren't we, sir?

Thank you both for this very important conversation.

I'm curious, as we've seen what's happened in the last 14 years of you receiving these postcards, what the evolution has been, what the changes have been.

Good question.

Very interested in, in your response.

- Thank you for asking that question.

We have seen the stories get deeper and deeper.

You know, in the beginning we had a lot of stories that were, why can't we get along?

Or - Right.

- You know, now people really, you know, just open up and younger people talk about what they think.

Older people talk about what they've experienced a lot more in.

And, and I'm not saying that this is a crystal ball, but if you had talked to me ahead of the 2016 election, I actually had a pretty good indication that Donald Trump was going to win.

And one of the things, one of the reasons that I started to see a lot of white men in the inbox talking about feeling like they were invisible, a lot of people talking about feeling like they lived in America that they didn't recognize.

And I thought, boy, if someone can speak to that, that's, that is a political message that is going to find a, a welcome home in a lot of ears.

So we've, we have seen people respond after George Floyd and in a certain way.

And then two years on from that, I thought it was gonna be better.

I'm done.

I'm tapped out.

You know, a woman from Colorado wrote, writes, my white guilt is all gone.

You know, it's just too hard.

It doesn't get easier.

I'm always the person that's to - Blame.

Yep.

- You know, I don't feel like this is a conversation that ever accrues anything good to me.

So, you know, y'all figure it out.

I'm out, - I'm out, I'm out.

- You know, it's like putting the cards down.

But I'm glad you asked that question also, because it gives me, you know, a moment to say that this project needs to outlive me.

Because again, it started with postcards.

My, my parents were postal workers.

You know, maybe that's why I chose postcards.

Both of them were postal workers.

But this archive is a living, breathing thing.

And, and I describe it as social endocrinology, endocrinology being the study of tree rings.

If you know anything about tree rings, you cut a tree down that tree, the grain of the tree, the rings in the tree will tell you a story.

It will tell you about the surrounding environment.

It will tell you about chemicals that were introduced into the soil.

It will tell you about natural disasters.

It will tell you about what kind of pests lived in the area.

And this archive, which is bookended by the presidents of Barack Obama, and then Donald Trump again, you know, with Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

In between that and all kinds of things, COVID a global covid pandemic, economic tural crisis of the board.

- Right.

George, George Floyd, - George Floyd, Tamir Rice, you know, all, all of that.

In here, I think about people who do what we do 50 years on.

Right.

Journalists, storytellers, archeologists, sociologists, this resource, which is unfiltered because I just put a simple prompt.

- Yep.

- And, and people tell me, you know, about their lives in all, you know, I'd, I'd never heard of Katie Texas.

And I suddenly started getting a bunch of cards from Katy.

I was like, what's going on in Katy, Texas?

Cute name.

But I didn't, you know, things like that.

That, so this archive will help people understand America.

- So where does it live now?

Where will it live?

- Right now?

It lives in server.

Right.

- But you know, there are a number of wonderful institutions, like o for instance, a couple on the University of Texas - Campus.

- Yeah.

That would probably love to have the - Ability.

Yeah.

You actually, it's one of the, I have an eye on one of them.

You have a - Keep to keep - This library that's - Alive.

But also the second part of it is to keep it going.

- Yeah.

- It's not just about what came in for the 14 years, but what about the next 14 and the 14 after that.

There's value in this work continuum.

Yeah.

- But - Thank you for the question.

Thank you for the question.

Going good.

Thank you.

Alright, Steve, how's our time?

We okay?

One more.

Very good.

Hi.

Come on up.

- Ever the salesman, Evan.

Hi Randy.

- And how you - Go?

Hi.

I was reminded sitting here of a book I read in 2016 called Strangers in Their Own Land.

And I'm thinking we haven't come very far from then.

And that was a book that we read all at that time about how people don't feel like they're being seen and that people undocumented are taking their place in line.

And that, you know, that they have spent all of their lives working, working, working in, and other people are coming in and jumping.

And I'm thinking that was to get over the 2016 election.

Right.

And then here we are.

And I just kind of think that we're not looking in the mirror enough and seeing how we aren't seeing the people who voted for the upcoming president, you know, that we're just not, we're really not for many in this room.

I speak for myself.

I'm just, I just have not really spent enough time reflecting on those people who are not being seen and that they're the ones that turned this election.

And I just was wondering if you had any comments about, - You know, it, it's interesting when you say look in a mirror.

'cause I always think about, first of all, thank you for your question and thank you for coming today.

I think about windows and mirrors and I think about the power of storytelling and the stories that we don't see, you know, the stories that you don't see on tv, the stories that you don't see in film.

I mean, you mentioned that if you turn on the TV now, if you watch commercial television, you see a lot of interracial couples.

Do you see people sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of bills?

- No.

- You know, do you, there's there's stories that we don't see.

So we, we, - And, and by the way, the critique of our profession, yours and mine for so many years, is that it only tells the stories it chooses to tell and does not actually reflect the reality of life in America.

- And when we talk about working class voters, - Right.

- You know, I always feel like there's a word that's left out.

'cause you're really usually talking about working class white voters, - Right.

- And working class.

The working class includes everybody, you know, it includes people of color, it includes black people, it includes Latinos, it includes, you know, so we, we, we get these kind of tropes in our head and we have to figure out how we can see each other in a world that is smaller and smaller and smaller.

And where we consume a media diet that so often confirms or affirms what we already believe.

Yeah.

Or what we already see.

Because that's part of what we're dealing with is if you are, if you were reading or watching or doing anything that is part of a streaming service that is on a phone, that is on a computer, that is on an iPad, these algorithms choose what you like and then they give you more of what you - Like.

Right.

Well they're, they're the instruments of confirmation bias.

Right.

- Right.

Right.

Yeah.

So if you, and I'm just gonna point to someone in the room, gentlemen, in the, in the maroon sweater, if, if you and I both searched for the same thing, me in Washington DC you here in Austin, my results, we would use the same sentence and my results would be very different than yours.

And that's because the algorithms are feeding us different kinds of things.

And so we aren't operating from a common set of facts.

Often we're not operating from a common sense of reality.

And it makes it harder for us to see each other.

And at the same time, a lot of us are losing what we used to call that third space.

We're not going to church as much.

Church is often where we saw a lot of different people we're shopping at home instead of going to the mall.

A grocery Well, the disappearance - Of local newspapers.

That used to be a place where we saw people we didn't agree with necessarily Yes.

But in a safe way.

- Yes.

And in the news, but also in the soft sections.

- Right.

- You know, in the feature sections you just saw, you saw community.

You're talking about the mirror.

You, you would, with your, you know, your grapefruit and your cereal in the morning, you'd see your community reflected back to you.

And, and we don't get that anymore in the same way.

That's right.

- Yeah.

It's too bad.

We are so fortunate to have had an hour of Michelle Norris's time.

Please give her a big hand.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for coming.

We'll see you.