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1:35

Lowry is, among other things, a

1:37

public intellectual and an academic

1:40

economist. He's just published a

1:42

memoir that is unlike anything I've ever read,

1:44

and I'm guessing unlike anything you've ever

1:46

read either. It's called

1:49

Late Admissions, Confessions

1:51

of a Black Conservative. Here's

1:53

the first line of Lowry's book. We

1:56

are playing a game, you and I,

1:58

reader and author. And

2:01

what are the rules of Lowry's game? Here's

2:04

how I describe it. The writer

2:06

will tell the reader things about

2:08

himself that most people would never

2:10

admit publicly. And the

2:12

reader will try to determine if

2:14

these admissions are what Lowry calls

2:16

a cover story, meant to obscure

2:18

something even worse, or

2:20

if the writer is being honest. Why?

2:23

To what end? The

2:26

book is, to some degree, an

2:28

exercise in game theory, which is

2:30

appropriate given that one of Lowry's

2:32

mentors was the pioneering game theorist

2:34

Thomas Schelling, who helped create U.S.

2:36

nuclear deterrence policy during the Cold

2:38

War, the deeds and

2:40

misdeeds that Lowry confesses to in the

2:43

book. You may be inclined

2:45

to not believe them. Having

2:47

read the book, and now having

2:49

spoken with Lowry, I am inclined

2:51

to believe them, which doesn't

2:53

necessarily make things any more comfortable.

2:58

One thing that strikes me during

3:00

all the troubles you've had and

3:02

all the double lives you've led,

3:05

it seemed as though you

3:07

were shockingly bad

3:09

at self-reflection. There

3:12

are all these moments, reading about

3:14

your life, where the reader just

3:16

wants to say, no, no, no, don't do

3:19

that again. It's like watching the bad horror

3:21

movie, like don't go into the basement where

3:23

the guy with the chainsaw is hiding. Don't

3:25

do that. And yet you keep doing it.

3:28

Well, I hadn't quite seen it that

3:31

way, although Tom Schelling, my dear friend,

3:33

the late great economist, his widow, Alice

3:35

Schelling, I sent her

3:37

the book in draft, and she read it.

3:41

And she writes me saying, I

3:43

couldn't stop myself every page I'd

3:45

turn and say, no, Glenn, no,

3:47

don't, don't, condoms, Glenn, condoms. So

3:52

it struck her in a similar way.

4:00

shouting back at him too. And that's

4:02

the point, because he sees a world

4:05

in which politics is losing

4:07

out to protest, where honest

4:09

inquiry is drowned out by

4:11

sloganeering, and where second

4:14

chances are increasingly rare. That

4:17

last one is particularly tough

4:19

for Lowry to accept, because if it

4:21

weren't for second chances, and

4:23

third and fourth chances too, we

4:26

wouldn't be having this conversation today. So,

4:29

sit down, buckle up, and

4:31

get ready to play Glenn Lowry's

4:33

game. This is

4:39

Freakin' in Its

4:42

Radio, a

4:45

podcast that is produced

4:47

ahead of everything, with

4:52

your host, Steven Guttner. Glenn

5:04

Lowry grew up in Chicago, part of

5:07

a large and boisterous black family. Some

5:09

of his relatives were brilliant and driven,

5:11

the type that W.E.B. Du Bois liked

5:14

to call the talented 10th. But

5:16

the family also had its share of troublemakers. Glenn

5:20

Lowry inherited some of both. He

5:22

was always very bright, but school didn't always

5:25

hold his attention, and he spent some time

5:27

dodging the police. His first

5:29

attempt at college didn't go well, so

5:31

he dropped out and worked for a

5:33

while in a factory. But then he

5:35

caught a second wind, getting his undergraduate

5:37

degree from Northwestern, and his PhD from

5:40

MIT. In 1982, at the age of 33, he

5:44

became the first black professor to gain

5:46

tenure in the Harvard Economics Department.

5:51

It seems like the one constant in your

5:53

life, I mean this is a cliche, but

5:55

the one constant in your life has been

5:57

change. Most people by the time they're thirty...

6:00

or 35, they've kind of become a thing and

6:02

they stay that thing. You

6:04

meanwhile, I mean, I almost

6:06

need a scorecard here. It's like you're

6:08

a hardcore academic for a while, then

6:11

you're not, then you are again. You're

6:13

a drug addict for a while, and

6:15

thankfully you're not. You become

6:17

infatuated or fall in love with new

6:19

women all the time. Sometimes when you're

6:21

with someone else, then you fall out

6:23

of love. You're a neocon, then a

6:25

liberal, then a conservative again.

6:28

You're a religious Christian, then you're

6:30

not. You change academic institutions a

6:32

lot. There are falling outs. There

6:35

are coolings off. And

6:37

I'm curious what you think that's all about

6:39

and whether maybe you recommend it. Maybe it's

6:42

a good idea to tear up your

6:44

entire psychic roadmap every couple

6:46

years and remake yourself, but I don't know.

6:48

Do you recommend it? Oh,

6:50

I don't know. Certainly

6:53

it's not a plan. I'm not

6:55

executing a plot here. I think

6:59

your description is apt. I have gone left and

7:01

right. I've gone in and out. I

7:03

have fallen out with old friends. I have

7:05

moved. I've been at four different universities over

7:09

the course of my career. Actually

7:11

five. Northwestern

7:13

Michigan, Harvard, Boston University, and

7:15

now Brown. So if

7:17

we were to be really reductive, do you

7:19

see all this change as generally a

7:22

cost or a benefit? I see it

7:24

as a benefit. Okay, tell me why.

7:26

Well, to me, it's like being

7:28

honest with yourself about something and then acting on

7:30

that. I was way

7:32

too comfortable with the Neil Kahn, right? In

7:34

the late eighties and early nineties. I

7:37

almost sold my soul. I was

7:39

that guy. I was the guy that they

7:41

trot out. I don't mean to me it

7:43

gets conspiratorial. It wasn't conspiratorial, but

7:46

I would say the thing that the

7:48

black conservative guy was supposed to say.

7:50

Yeah. You were called by a friend

7:52

and colleague, Martin Kilson, a pathetic black

7:55

mascot of the right. Yeah.

7:57

Martin Kilson, the first African

8:00

American tenured member of the faculty

8:02

of arts and sciences at Harvard

8:04

University. And yes,

8:06

he called me publicly, a pathetic black mascot

8:08

of the right. And what

8:10

I'm saying is, I came to

8:12

understand there was more than

8:14

a grain of truth in that unkind

8:16

characterization. Now, that was

8:18

your first round of, let's call it

8:20

conservatism. You're kind of back on the

8:23

conservative end of the spectrum now,

8:25

although not a Trumpian.

8:27

I'm not a Republican for that

8:29

matter. How would you define your

8:31

conservatism then, especially divorced from Republicanism?

8:34

Well, I'd say notwithstanding the fact that

8:36

my gay son is comfortable with his father's

8:39

view of his sexuality, and he has every

8:41

right to be, because I am, in fact,

8:43

entirely comfortable with his sexuality. I'm

8:46

still kind of culturally conservative. I mean,

8:48

the transgender issue, I can't

8:51

even say, I can't say it here, what

8:54

I think, because it's unspeakable. Meaning

8:57

you're not willing to accept

8:59

the punishment that comes with saying something

9:01

today in that realm? Yeah. On

9:04

some of the cutting edge

9:07

liberationist movements in American

9:09

culture, I'm not entirely on board. I'm

9:12

okay with abortion through the early

9:14

periods of pregnancy, but think that

9:16

you can't just take a life

9:18

because it's inconvenient. Once you

9:20

get past a certain point, the issue should be

9:22

about what point is that point. I

9:25

think what's happening to the black family, even

9:28

to use that phrase, the black family,

9:31

in terms of kids born out of

9:33

wedlock and family instability and fatherless homes

9:35

and whatnot, is worth remarking upon. I

9:37

think it's implicated in part in the

9:39

persistence of racial disparities.

9:41

I think it's indicative of something

9:44

that is alarming in

9:46

African American domestic relations.

9:49

I'm more sympathetic to the

9:51

maintenance of order, necessity for

9:54

the sustaining of civil life

9:57

and requiring the services of...

10:00

law enforcement, even in

10:02

the face of the fact of police

10:04

brutality and racial discrimination and the killings

10:06

of unarmed black men and all that.

10:09

I'm not a big fan of Black Lives Matter. I

10:12

think the cultural avant-garde dimension of that

10:14

movement is part of the reason why

10:17

I long for the

10:20

simpler days of a

10:22

church-based, Christian-animated, pro-American. See,

10:25

I mean, even these words. These words are so

10:28

out of date, take on

10:31

African-American participation in the

10:33

American enterprise, which is

10:36

at the opposite end of the spectrum from

10:38

where Black Lives Matter stand. So

10:41

yeah, I've been wanting to say, look,

10:44

there's how many homicides in the

10:46

country a year? Half of

10:48

them are black men. Most of

10:50

those, 95% of those killed by other black men. And

10:53

what have you got? A handful of

10:56

cases of unarmed, putatively innocent African-Americans

10:58

whose lives are taken by cops.

11:01

Every single one of those wrongful police

11:03

actions should be sanctioned. But

11:05

what's the real problem here? I'm inclined

11:07

to say stuff like that. Jared-Mulhay. In

11:10

your book, you write about a long list

11:12

of problems in black communities. You write about

11:14

the terrible public schools, unstable one-parent homes, cycles

11:17

of unemployment, crime and more. When you

11:19

write, it seems to me

11:22

that white racism can take us only

11:24

so far in explaining these maladies. Can

11:27

you walk me through your position there? We

11:31

got racial disparities in education, in

11:34

economic attainment, wealth holding, in

11:37

social life and criminal participation,

11:40

in penetration of certain professions, etc.

11:43

We got disparities. There's

11:46

a line about these disparities, which is

11:48

the anti-racist line that one associates most

11:50

recently with the Ibram X. Kindy view

11:53

of the world, which is either you're a racist who is

11:56

acting in ways that perpetuate the disparity or you're an

11:58

anti-racist who's acting in ways that perpetuate the disparity. acting

12:00

in ways that diminish the disparity. Racism

12:02

and discrimination by employers are in housing or

12:04

in the credit market. These are issues. One

12:07

should be aware of them. There's legislation to

12:09

deal with them. We should be ever vigilant.

12:12

But these are not the most pressing

12:14

issues. The most pressing issues have to do

12:16

with to what

12:18

extent are we African Americans

12:20

so organized and oriented that

12:23

we are in a position to take

12:26

advantage of what opportunities actually exist. They

12:28

may not be perfectly, in

12:30

every instance, equal. And

12:33

we should be vigilant about that.

12:35

But they are largely equal,

12:38

vastly more so than was the

12:40

case a generation or two ago.

12:43

And the ball is in our court. And

12:46

yet, we have cultivated this posture

12:49

in our political activities and in

12:51

our cultural and social criticism that

12:54

can't get out of this early

12:57

mid-20th century box

12:59

that doesn't realize that the

13:02

country is a dynamic, ongoing,

13:04

and constantly changing engine of

13:06

opportunity and mobility and economic

13:08

dynamism. That the world is

13:10

not waiting for America to do right

13:12

by its black people. Have you noticed

13:14

the scores of millions of non-European immigrants

13:16

who come into this country from Asia

13:19

and Latin America who are transforming

13:21

the country and transforming their lives

13:24

here? And you're going to

13:26

look up in the middle of the 21st

13:28

century. And all you're going

13:30

to have to say is the 19th century

13:34

had slavery, the 20th century had

13:36

Jim Crow, and we're due reparations.

13:39

And the best outcome for you then will

13:41

be a pat on the head. They'll actually

13:43

give you the goddamn reparations. Then

13:46

where are you? So

13:48

if we don't man up and

13:50

woman up, this is Glenn Lowry

13:52

vituperating here. And

13:54

don't seize the

13:56

nettle. Stop making excuses.

13:59

Nobody is coming. to save us, these

14:01

Democratic Party apparatics who

14:04

want your vote, they'll tell you anything that they

14:06

think you want to hear. Their

14:08

kids are not languishing in these jails. So

14:11

we had better get busy. The 21st

14:13

century is not waiting for us. But

14:16

for those who argue that the US

14:18

is a system that's defined

14:20

by systemic racism and white

14:22

supremacy, you say what? I

14:25

say we, Black

14:28

Americans, in the 21st

14:30

century have boundless

14:32

opportunity. I

14:34

say we are by far the

14:37

richest and most powerful large population

14:40

of African descent on the

14:42

planet. I say that

14:45

the advent of an African American

14:47

middle class, which has taken place

14:49

over the last half century and

14:51

more, is a

14:53

world historic event. I say

14:55

that the success

14:58

of the civil rights movement, not

15:01

only in law, but in the

15:03

transformation of attitude and custom and

15:06

norm in American life, is

15:09

virtually without historical precedent. And

15:12

so I say the glass is way, way,

15:14

way more than half full here. I

15:17

guess that pretty much captures it for me

15:20

in preference to cultivating

15:22

the posture of the

15:24

victim and the aggrieved, where

15:26

I feel that in a way we are being

15:28

patronized. We're being patted on the head.

15:32

Don't worry about it. We understand. We

15:34

understand why you couldn't do this. We

15:36

understand why you weren't able to live

15:38

up to this or that expectation. And

15:40

I fear that because it is an

15:42

open society and because

15:44

technology and economic practice and

15:47

so on are constantly

15:49

being changed, that

15:51

will be left behind. We, by

15:53

which I mean a non-trivial portion

15:56

of the African-descended population in the

15:58

country who were mired in the

16:00

backwaters of society will remain there,

16:03

and the country will just move

16:05

on. And people will

16:07

not be held responsible for their

16:09

failures to take advantage of the

16:12

opportunities that exist, but instead will

16:14

be handed a ready-made excuse. It's

16:17

probably the path of least resistance

16:19

for the mainstream, but is not

16:21

at all healthy, either

16:23

for the country or for the well-being of

16:25

my co-racialists. Do you

16:27

think that that message might be

16:29

more widely accepted or embraced if

16:32

you weren't politically

16:34

conservative, though? Well,

16:36

I think that's an oxymoron or

16:38

a contradiction in terms. I would

16:40

be, by virtue of saying that

16:42

message, by definition, politically conservative. My

16:44

point is that because that component

16:46

of your message could resonate with

16:48

a lot of people who, if

16:51

they know it's coming from someone who

16:54

is aligned with some conservative planks, it's

16:56

just going to fall on deaf ears.

16:58

That's my concern or wonder. Well,

17:00

that may be, I will say, a hope

17:02

I have is that the

17:05

candid self-revelation that I

17:07

undertake in this memoir

17:11

will persuade some detractors who, when

17:13

they see the subtitle Confessions of

17:15

a Black Conservative, want to put

17:17

the book down and run from

17:19

the bookstore to

17:21

say, well, wait a minute. Look

17:23

at his struggles. Look at

17:26

his self-criticism. Look at how he

17:28

has grown. Look

17:30

at the full measure of the man. Maybe

17:33

we ought to take him a little bit more

17:35

seriously than to just invoke some

17:37

stereotype, oh, Black Conservative. I think we know

17:39

about those guys and dismiss

17:42

him. If I

17:44

didn't know any better, I might look at

17:46

Glenn Lowry and Barack Obama and think, well,

17:49

they're both, let's call them black

17:51

intellectuals, both have some Chicago history,

17:55

both are politically attuned, and I might

17:57

think you'd be a big fan of

17:59

that. of Obama, but in fact you

18:01

write that he was little

18:04

more than a political operator

18:06

whose self-presentation as an icon

18:08

of American blackness was

18:10

absurd. Talk about not

18:12

necessarily Obama as a person, but the

18:15

Obama presidency and what's your assessment

18:17

of it now that it's in the rearview mirror a

18:19

good bit. Well, that

18:21

remark that you quoted, I

18:23

believe, was made in the

18:25

context of me describing my

18:27

reaction to the emergence of

18:30

Obama as a political figure in 2007, 2008, when

18:32

I thought of him as

18:36

an opportunist and a carpetbagger. I

18:39

knew the Altgeld Gardens, far

18:42

south side, low income,

18:45

black enclave, where

18:48

Obama got his start as a

18:51

quote, community organizer, close quote. I

18:53

knew those people. I knew the housing projects. I knew

18:55

the streets. I

18:58

thought, okay, some fancy people at Harvard

19:00

Law think that this is a very

19:02

bright young man. He's

19:04

nice and shiny, clean and well

19:06

spoken. He's got Chicago. He

19:09

runs his campaign. He announces in Springfield,

19:11

Illinois. He's got Abraham Lincoln. I thought,

19:13

oh man. Okay,

19:16

okay. It's a sales pitch. I

19:18

get it. It's America, PT Barnum,

19:20

whatever. But come on, really? You're

19:22

black from the south side of Chicago? That really, I

19:25

think a historic opportunity was missed

19:28

if he's going to make Al

19:30

Sharpton his ambassador to black America. What's

19:32

the point of having a black president? I mean,

19:34

Joe Biden could have done that on

19:37

that question, the question of how

19:39

does America deal with the unfinished

19:41

business of incorporating the descendants of

19:43

slaves fully into the body politic?

19:47

The role that can uniquely be

19:49

played by a black president is

19:52

to tell the country the truth

19:55

about these issues, not

19:57

to gaslight us, not to guilt

19:59

trip us. Not to virtue signal us,

20:02

but to tell the country the truth.

20:05

You are not at all pleased by

20:07

the Black Lives Matter movement and their

20:10

prominence. Explain why. I mean,

20:12

they don't much like the nuclear family. They

20:15

don't like capitalism. They

20:17

think about America as an

20:20

imperial power that's profoundly

20:22

corrupt, morally bankrupt, and

20:24

contemptible. They're

20:26

radical with a capital R along

20:28

many of these dimensions. Now,

20:31

if you were a white guy and said

20:33

those very words, what would happen to you?

20:35

I don't know. I should hope nothing, but

20:37

I expect, depending on the context, uttering

20:41

those words could cause me a lot of grief.

20:43

If I were teaching a class on American social

20:45

life at an Ivy League college with a third

20:47

of the students being of color, and

20:50

I said something like that, I might find

20:52

myself being brought up on charges, you know,

20:54

students complaining about hostile classroom environment. What

20:57

do you feel are the costs

20:59

to American society of

21:01

how difficult it is for

21:04

anyone who's not Black to

21:06

talk about certain Black issues? At

21:09

the end of the day, it depends on what kind

21:11

of conversation one is trying

21:13

to have. I think

21:15

it's deadly in a university that

21:18

we would constrain argument and

21:20

the exchange of ideas and

21:23

discourse by these ad hominem

21:25

identitarian prohibitions.

21:28

I think that that's a very, very

21:31

bad thing for a university, which is

21:33

where that kind of critical engagement with

21:35

facts should take place. I

21:38

think a politician who tempers what she

21:40

says in the interest

21:42

of not inflaming uninformed

21:44

racist ideas in the population or

21:47

signaling to a vulnerable community a

21:49

set of sympathetic consideration

21:51

for the interests of that community and

21:54

awareness of their vulnerability, you know,

21:56

I think a case can be made. I

21:58

don't think political correctness. is,

22:00

it's so facto a

22:03

bad thing. I mean, every instance

22:05

of modulating in the interest of

22:07

not giving the wrong impression, not

22:09

offending sensibility, sometimes that can

22:11

be the only way to sustain a conversation long

22:13

enough for it to ever be able to evolve

22:15

and mature into a

22:17

more considered disputation about

22:20

controversial issues. This

22:22

question has come up for me recently because

22:24

I interviewed Amy Wax, the University

22:26

of Pennsylvania law professor who has gotten herself

22:28

into trouble for taking

22:30

conservative takes on some racial issues.

22:33

And she believes that it's an important thing

22:36

to do to call to people's attention

22:38

the difference in the

22:40

distribution of cognitive ability as measured

22:42

by IQ tests within

22:45

racially distinct populations with the

22:47

black population mean being

22:49

roughly 15 IQ points about

22:52

a standard deviation lower than the white population means.

22:54

She thinks that's a very important thing to call

22:56

to people's attention. I

22:58

think it can be a very destructive thing

23:01

to call it to people's attention, depending on

23:03

the context of what kind of conversation you're

23:05

trying to sustain with people. But

23:07

I also think it's true. I

23:10

don't mean to pile on Amy Wax, who I

23:12

think is being treated very badly at the University

23:14

of Pennsylvania where they're running her out of town

23:16

on a rail in effect for

23:18

having opinions. I don't necessarily share the opinions, but I

23:21

think you should be able to have them. She

23:23

says, there are no black physicists

23:26

in the physics department at Harvard. How could they

23:28

be? Look at the IQ distributions. And

23:30

I want to say two things. I want to say one, you

23:33

don't know that the IQ distribution difference is

23:35

what accounts for the absence of a black.

23:38

And the other thing I want to say

23:40

is, even if it were the case, the

23:43

aspiration to bring blacks into the physics department

23:45

at Harvard is a defensible social goal. And

23:47

you haven't said anything that refutes that as

23:50

a social goal. So you're

23:52

not engaging in the moral conversation, what kind

23:54

of country do we want to be, and

23:56

you're extrapolating beyond the data because you think

23:58

you can explain this thing. with one variable

24:00

and there are many variables at play. But

24:03

in any case, that whole discussion doesn't get

24:05

very far at all if the person who

24:08

introduces the fact that there are

24:10

differences in the distribution of cognitive ability

24:12

by race in the country does so

24:14

with their lip curled up and with

24:16

a sneer. When

24:20

he was a young academic economist,

24:22

Glenn Lowry got off to a

24:24

very hot start and then he

24:27

choked. That story

24:29

coming up after the break. I'm Stephen Dubner

24:31

and this is Freakin' Out Mc's Radio. Freakin'

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cars.com. Glenn

25:53

Lowry has been publishing research in economics

25:55

journals for more than 40 years, but

25:58

he's best known for his commentary.

26:00

on political and social issues. His

26:02

new book, Late Admissions, includes

26:05

all that, but also a lot

26:07

of personal stories that

26:09

most of us would never tell in public.

26:12

I asked him what was behind the book's title. Well,

26:15

you know, late, late in life,

26:18

admissions, there's a confessional quality to much

26:20

of the narrative

26:23

I'm telling about my life

26:25

honestly, and some of the

26:27

darkest corners get exposed to

26:29

sunlight. So

26:31

admissions. I went through

26:34

various titles. Changing My Mind was

26:36

an early contender.

26:39

Changing My Mind was about politics, was about am

26:41

I on the left, am I on the right,

26:43

what about my friends whom I've abandoned or betrayed.

26:46

And I wanted to interrogate

26:48

that just as a self

26:50

exploratory project, quite apart from

26:52

the literary product.

26:55

I wanted to ask myself what was going

26:57

on, you know, when I had a political

27:00

rally where my friend was isolated and, you

27:02

know, verbally attacked. I didn't stand

27:04

up for him. And this is at a Black

27:06

Panther gathering back in Chicago and your friend Woody.

27:08

Yes, you're talking about? Yeah, I'm talking

27:10

about Woody, my friend, who looked like a white

27:12

guy, although he was a black guy, we're at

27:15

this political rally and white guys

27:17

are not supposed to be there because it's the black people

27:19

getting this stuff together. And yet

27:21

there he is, you know, trepid. And

27:24

he, you know, he wants to speak and they

27:26

don't want him to speak. Who can vouch for

27:28

this man, says one of those guys up in

27:30

the front who's the black power mogul. And

27:33

you know, I should have said this is my buddy,

27:35

he's okay. And instead, I kept my mouth shut because

27:37

I didn't want to be on the outs with the

27:40

temper of that radical meeting. You know, you

27:42

brought a white guy into our meeting. Not

27:44

only that, but years later, you sleep with

27:46

Woody's wife. You had to tell that, did

27:48

you? Well, you know, I read it in

27:50

your book. Confessions of

27:52

a black conservative. Indeed, I did. Indeed,

27:55

I did. Are there

27:57

any confessions in your book that you...

27:59

you came close to

28:02

not confessing that you almost

28:04

pulled out or only reluctantly

28:06

included? My affair

28:08

with my best friend from boyhood's

28:10

wife, the

28:12

questionable paternity of my sister,

28:16

how to make a crack pipe. I

28:19

know a little bit too much about that. I

28:21

wondered whether or not to get that gritty, but

28:23

decided after looking over the transcript in which I

28:25

had gone on an extended, spontaneous

28:27

discussion of the detailed practices that

28:29

you had to cultivate in order

28:32

to be an effective smoker

28:34

of crack cocaine from the backseat of your

28:36

car in the 1980s. I

28:39

wondered if that wasn't over the top a little bit, and then

28:41

I decided I'm just going to let it all hang out. Was

28:44

there anything that you didn't include, or is

28:46

this the full Monty we're getting? There's

28:49

nothing that I'm willing to tell you that I

28:53

didn't include in the book. Fair enough.

28:56

Of course there are things. Look, I

28:58

couldn't tell of all the affairs. I couldn't

29:00

tell of all the portrayals because there are

29:02

too many. Well, yeah, but that's different. That's

29:04

just a volume question. Yeah, I was about

29:06

to note that there are also two gory,

29:09

gruesome, and craven, and callow, and

29:11

despicable. Everything

29:16

with all that gruesome and despicable

29:19

was an economist who was brilliant

29:21

and seemingly bold. In his

29:24

early years at Harvard, he would have been

29:26

a decent bet to win the John Bates

29:28

Clark Medal, the big prize for young academic

29:30

economists. It's often the precursor

29:32

to a Nobel Prize. That

29:34

was something that I thought about, and

29:37

I even talked with some of my

29:39

mentors about as an aspiration, because

29:41

I did hit the ground running. I had half dozen

29:43

papers in good journals by the time I got to

29:45

Harvard in 1982, and I

29:48

thought I could be a player at that

29:50

level within the profession. It

29:53

didn't quite work out that way, and

29:55

I made some choices that in retrospect

29:57

were motivated in part by I

30:00

lost my nerve. You write in the

30:02

book that you choked. I almost never

30:04

hear anyone say that they choked. We

30:06

say that about other people, but

30:09

the people in those positions usually have a

30:11

different explanation of it. But you write several

30:13

times in this book that your

30:15

stint at Harvard was an out-and-out choke.

30:18

Yeah. You know, I

30:20

was afraid of failing, and I

30:23

bailed out. I got to Harvard in

30:25

1982, jointly appointed in

30:27

economics and Afro-American Studies. That's what

30:29

they called it in those years,

30:32

Afro-American. And it was a new

30:34

department then? It was a

30:36

relatively new department. It had actually been formed

30:38

in either the late 60s or early 70s,

30:40

but it had fallen into bad repair, and

30:43

they were looking to repopulate the department

30:46

with outstanding scholars in the humanities and

30:48

social sciences. And I

30:50

came in six years out of graduate

30:52

school with a strong track record. But

30:55

it's very clear that what I need

30:57

to do if I want to succeed

30:59

in economics is write another six

31:01

papers, and not just

31:04

another six papers, to have a

31:06

research program built around an important

31:09

unanswered set of questions on the

31:11

frontier of investigation in economic theory,

31:14

which I execute. I mean, that sounds like

31:16

it's within your means. It sounds like you're

31:18

capable of all that. That's exactly what Tom

31:20

Schelling, my dear friend, said to me when

31:22

I went crying in my beer to him,

31:26

saying, what was me? What was me? I

31:28

don't know if I've got any ideas. Am I

31:30

good enough to be here? Well, he also said,

31:32

hey, Glenn, every single person in this department thinks

31:34

exactly that about themselves. He did.

31:36

He says, all these neurotics around

31:39

here living in fear that someone's going to

31:41

ask them, what have you done for me

31:43

lately? These people on their

31:45

way to winning this or that prize nevertheless

31:47

are afraid that they are not going to

31:49

measure up and are constantly looking over their

31:51

shoulders. And he said, you should just relax and

31:54

go and do your work. And I didn't. I

31:56

couldn't. When I say I choked them, then I

31:58

sat for hours with my yellow paths, with my

32:00

notes, with my journals. And

32:03

it wasn't clicking for me. And I didn't have

32:05

confidence that ever was going to click. If

32:07

you could go back to that self of

32:10

yours now, or if you could go back

32:12

to someone who's listening to you today who's

32:14

in the similar position, what advice would you have?

32:17

I'd say, stick to your knitting

32:20

and let the chips fall where they may. I'd say,

32:24

you know, you must have some talent, you got you to where

32:26

you are right now. Maybe you're

32:28

not going to win the prize. That's not the end of the world. What

32:31

work do you find to be of value? Do that.

32:35

And actually, in retrospect, I became

32:37

a public intellectual. I moved over

32:39

to the Kennedy School of Government.

32:41

I shifted my writing output from

32:44

stick figured models to get

32:46

into clever economics journals to

32:49

writing, you know, blockbuster essays

32:51

that pulled the cover off

32:53

of the shrouded and inadequate

32:56

public discussion about an important

32:59

question for American domestic affairs,

33:02

and to some degree reoriented the

33:04

discourse. That

33:07

question was affirmative action. At

33:10

Harvard Kennedy School, Lowry became well known

33:12

as a critic of affirmative action in

33:14

hiring and college admissions. A

33:16

few years later, he returned to

33:18

academic economics, taking a position at

33:20

Boston University. But he stuck with

33:23

the subject. In 1993,

33:25

he and Stephen Cote published

33:27

a paper in the American

33:29

Economic Review called, Will Affirmative

33:31

Action Policies Eliminate Negative Stereotypes?

33:34

It's not a data driven paper. It's a

33:36

theoretical paper of the sort that used

33:39

to take up a lot of space in

33:41

economics journals where applied theorists

33:43

would spin out an exploration

33:46

of a stick figured mathematical

33:48

representation of some complex system.

33:51

You make it sound so valuable when you put

33:53

it that way, Glenn. Well, you know,

33:57

I think I'm trying to see it in full context. Loud.

34:00

and we were before I take

34:02

as a profession. meaning there's more

34:04

empiricism, even in those theoretically areas.

34:06

Yeah, meaning there's more data. And.

34:09

There's been cultivated a appreciation

34:12

within a professor for the

34:14

value of carefully executed, Sexually.

34:17

Based investigations of cases. But in

34:19

Nineteen Ninety Three when their paper

34:21

was published, you could still make

34:24

a living by asking a question

34:26

of saying. Or here's a good,

34:28

interesting little model: Of

34:30

that and that's what this

34:32

paper was about. Affirmative action.

34:34

The idea was simple: will

34:36

affirmative action be necessary in

34:39

perpetuity if we start out

34:41

with racial disparities that are

34:43

not a reflection of fundamental

34:45

differences between the populations, but

34:47

then are rather an artifact

34:49

of the a self fulfilling

34:51

negative beliefs. That. Employers

34:53

might have about a populace employees think

34:55

the black kids are on the whole.

34:58

Not. Gonna work out if you've

35:00

employed him and hence are requiring.

35:03

Exceptional additional evidence before they will take

35:05

a chance on a black kid and

35:07

hires. The black kids

35:09

knowing that it's gonna be difficult for them

35:12

to get hired when they consider whether or

35:14

not to make the investment to improve their

35:16

skills decide it's not worth it because the

35:18

chances of them getting hired or not so

35:20

great and so they don't make the investment.

35:22

That. Can be an equilibrium. The black kids

35:25

don't make the investment because the employees and

35:27

will inherently employs unwilling to hire them because

35:29

of black kids aren't making the investment And

35:31

this can be an equilibrium to the detriment

35:34

of the black kids because the employer could

35:36

have different and also self fulfilling police about

35:38

the why can't they employ to pick the

35:40

my kids are gonna on the whole do

35:43

well and kids require relatively less. Of

35:45

them in order to hire them in. the

35:47

white kids think the gonna get hired and

35:49

so they willing to make the investment etc.

35:52

So we start with that as a baseline

35:54

and we asked in that situation. Does.

35:56

the introduction of a requirement by

35:58

government that him employers hire the

36:01

black kids and the white kids at the

36:03

same rate, lead

36:05

to a circumstance in which

36:07

the employer's adverse expectations about

36:10

the black population are reversed

36:12

or dissipated.

36:15

And the answer is no, not

36:17

necessarily. It doesn't necessarily happen because

36:19

employers' beliefs and

36:21

workers' incentives are jointly

36:24

determined in our model. And

36:27

the introduction of a quota

36:29

requirement creates a circumstance

36:31

in which employers can have pessimistic beliefs

36:33

about the black population. But

36:37

in the interest of meeting

36:39

the affirmative action quota, notwithstanding

36:41

those pessimistic beliefs, still

36:43

endeavor to hire the blacks at the

36:45

same rate and so require even less

36:47

of them lowering

36:49

the standard in order to make

36:52

sure that the African-American youngsters are

36:54

adequately represented under the requirements of

36:56

the affirmative action constraint. But

36:59

lowering the standard can undercut their incentives.

37:02

Like you tell kids to get into law school,

37:05

if you're white, you have to be at the

37:07

90th percentile of the LSAT and

37:09

you have to have an A- grade point average and

37:11

then you can get into a good law school. But

37:15

if you're black, it's okay to be

37:17

at the 70th percentile of the LSAT

37:19

test takers and to have a

37:21

B-plus average and you can still get into law

37:23

school. Now if

37:26

I tell the kids that are white

37:28

and the black kids that they, in

37:30

effect, have to perform at different thresholds

37:32

of excellence in order to get admitted,

37:34

I change the incentives for those populations

37:37

in a way that could be adverse to

37:39

the blacks who will reckon that they

37:42

don't need to put in as much effort

37:44

if they're going to get the prize with

37:46

a lower test score and grade point average.

37:49

That can be what we call

37:51

a patronizing equilibrium. The

37:54

Black population is being patronized in the

37:56

sense that it is assumed that they

37:58

need to be true. It it with

38:01

kid gloves in order to achieve

38:03

the goal of equal representation. and

38:05

that assumption is a self fulfilling

38:07

prophecy which therefore does not eliminate

38:09

negative stereotypes. But let me ask

38:11

you this. I'm just curious where

38:13

you think we'd be with the

38:15

counterfactual with affirmative action policies in

38:17

education and labor market so instead

38:19

never been institute in this country.

38:21

Where do you think we'd be

38:24

instead. As. George

38:26

Herbert Walker Bush once said we be

38:28

in deep doo doo. You

38:30

know, I'm a critic of affirmative action. And

38:33

I welcome the Supreme court's decision

38:35

in. Twenty Twenty Three.

38:38

About what the Fourteenth Amendment requires and

38:40

how discriminating against his Asian kids as

38:42

a real problem. On the other hand,

38:45

I. Think that coming out of the

38:48

Nineteen sixties and Nineteen Seventies when

38:50

mainstream American institutions were bereft of

38:52

African American presence, it was a

38:54

first order imperative for the country.

38:58

To. Introduce some racial diversity into

39:00

those elite address But the question

39:02

is is this what we want

39:04

to do in perpetuity. Someone.

39:07

Saturday O'connor said and I think it

39:09

was two thousand and three and those

39:11

University of Michigan cases on affirmative Action

39:13

which was the last big case before

39:15

the Supreme Court on affirmative action before

39:18

the one just decided last year. When

39:20

she said I should hope that in

39:22

twenty five years we wouldn't still be

39:24

in this business, I'd say there was

39:26

a lot to be said for that

39:28

position and clock is ticking. See.

39:31

You grew up in an age of

39:33

protest, including against the Vietnam War, But

39:35

now you make the argument that a

39:38

lot of protest is based on false

39:40

who are murky narratives, that there's a

39:42

lot of protesting the sake of protesting,

39:45

and that people sees the high moral

39:47

ground even when it's undeserved. But there

39:49

are plainly still real problems that people

39:51

have to address. So as protest is

39:54

not a fruitful pass generally, what would

39:56

you have them do? The. First

39:58

part of my answer is. From Protest

40:00

A Politics. The.

40:03

Fortunes of the marginal amongst

40:05

African Americans will be most

40:07

effectively advance through politics. And

40:09

my politics. I mean trans

40:11

racial politics. I mean, a

40:13

politics that doesn't dwell on

40:15

the nineteenth century, but looks

40:17

to Sasson governing coalition of

40:20

progressive intend for the twenty

40:22

first century. But the other

40:24

part of that is development.

40:26

I'm saying okay, let me

40:29

take your progressive narrative is

40:31

your ultra liberal. Anti

40:33

racist narratives? Seriously. And

40:36

let me read American history and amount of friendly

40:38

the way in which you would interpret it which

40:40

is Black Sox have been kept at the margins

40:42

are the time blacks have had a boot on

40:44

I like we my boot or nanette well. A.

40:46

Boot on the neck at Sauce

40:48

Said blood to the brain mean

40:50

the weight of that mistreatment will

40:52

be manifests in the unfulfilled human

40:54

potential of the population subject to

40:56

it. We got work to do.

41:00

So politics not protest for their

41:02

performance art, sake of being able

41:04

to throw a fit. But.

41:07

Hard headed politics. It recognizes

41:09

limitations and the realities that

41:11

works to build coalitions that

41:13

are oriented towards a policy

41:15

program that is affirmative of

41:17

the human decency and so

41:19

on and a focus on

41:21

development. If

41:24

you find yourself thinking that Glynn Lowery

41:26

is too willing to go hard on

41:28

other people, Dollars. He

41:31

can go plenty hard on himself

41:33

and with good reason. It's coming

41:35

up after the break. I'm Steven

41:37

that they're in. This is to

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edwardjones.com/find your rich.

43:46

Edward Jones, member, SIPC. When

43:55

Glenn Lowry became a prominent critic of affirmative

43:57

action in the 1980s, he

43:59

just... He joined an influential group of

44:02

neoconservative intellectuals, but he broke

44:04

with that group in the

44:06

mid-90s after publicly attacking some

44:08

of their books, including Charles

44:10

Murray's The Bell Curve, which

44:12

Lowry described as borderline racist.

44:15

But more recently, he has directed most

44:17

of his criticism at progressives who point

44:20

to racism as the

44:22

overwhelming driver of inequality. His

44:25

personal life has been just as turbulent

44:27

as his politics. Not long after he

44:29

established himself as a brilliant young

44:32

academic economist, he was

44:34

staying out all night smoking crack

44:36

and soliciting prostitutes. He was

44:39

arrested twice, once for possession of drugs,

44:41

once for domestic abuse of a woman with

44:43

whom he was having an affair, although those

44:45

charges were later dropped. He spent

44:48

time in a halfway house, and

44:50

he committed himself to both sobriety

44:52

and the Christian faith, although

44:54

today he says he is no longer

44:57

a believer. I'm still

44:59

not entirely clear on the questions

45:01

about faith. I'd call myself an

45:03

agnostic, not an atheist. I

45:06

can't believe that a man was raised from the

45:08

dead and lives on now thousands of years after

45:10

his demise. On

45:12

the other hand, I find such dignity,

45:14

nobility, and humanity in the quest that

45:18

so many people have undertaken to

45:20

try to find a relationship with

45:22

the creator of the universe. I

45:25

think it's a hard problem, and it's

45:27

not entirely an intellectual problem. Do

45:29

you believe in an afterlife? No. No,

45:32

I don't believe in it. I think we

45:34

are our consciousness. That's something that's going on

45:36

in the brain. Neuroscientists are on it. Before

45:38

the 21st century is out, they'll probably have

45:40

pretty much of an answer, I'm guessing. And

45:43

when that stuff dies, those cells stop

45:46

firing. That's it. The

45:48

people that you were

45:50

friends with and worked with and sometimes,

45:52

you know, feuded with and sometimes got

45:55

alienated from, it's a really impressive

45:57

list of people. It

46:00

seems like it stood you in good stead, at least

46:02

a lot of times. You had a lot of people

46:04

who were very loyal to you and good to you,

46:06

and I'm sure you were often, if not always, loyal

46:08

and good to them too. But

46:11

you know, it strikes me that people

46:13

are having a harder time in this

46:17

digital first age of forming that

46:20

kind of relationship and having that

46:22

kind of conversation. You might call

46:24

it soul-searching or confessional, right? Do

46:26

you have advice for people on

46:29

how to make yourself more

46:31

likely to engage in that kind of

46:33

deep relationship? Yeah,

46:36

it's a nice observation that I'm proud

46:38

to hear you say. It

46:41

is an impressive, distinguished pantheon of

46:43

personalities over these decades. And yeah,

46:45

left, right, center. Agree,

46:48

disagree, but mutually respectful and learning from

46:50

each other. So how to cultivate that?

46:54

It seems to me that the technological

46:56

transformation of social media looms

46:58

large in our current intellectual

47:01

climate and that... I

47:04

mean, costs and benefits though, right? Just

47:06

look at the way you communicate now with

47:09

the public. Yes. You know,

47:11

YouTube, podcasts, sub-stack, etc. So there are

47:13

benefits for sure. It sounds like you're

47:15

saying the costs, however, can be substantial.

47:18

I don't have a real empirical basis for

47:20

making that assessment. It's a hunch. What

47:23

I'm thinking is, take my friendship with the

47:25

late Abigail Therenstrom and Stephen Therenstrom, which goes

47:27

back to my early days at Harvard, and

47:30

which ended when I critically reviewed their book,

47:32

America in Black and White, in a long

47:35

review in The Atlantic, and they broke off

47:37

with me. Now

47:39

we had been exchanging ideas through

47:42

correspondence and personal conversation, but nothing

47:44

on Twitter, nothing

47:47

that brought the attention of the world to what

47:49

it was that we had to say to one

47:51

another, nothing that left a permanent record. And

47:54

I think while we did end up falling

47:56

out, there was a long period before the

47:58

falling out before I... went public with

48:00

my critical review of their book when we

48:02

disagreed vociferously and we went back and forth

48:05

about it, but we did so kind

48:07

of on the down low. And

48:09

I'm wondering whether the

48:11

technology's communication today make it

48:13

less likely that people's exchanges

48:15

are of that sort. But

48:18

I'm over my skis now. I'm outside

48:20

of my area of expertise. Now

48:23

that you've come out on the other end

48:25

of all these experiences with a little bit

48:27

of crime, a lot of drugs, a lot

48:29

of sleeping around, along with a lot of

48:32

other very, let's call

48:34

them pro-social things as well. Do

48:36

you have any advice for people

48:38

who are in the middle of the trouble

48:40

for a way to kind of take a

48:42

step back and reflect and maybe change while

48:45

you're in the act as opposed to waiting

48:47

until it's all over and writing about it?

48:50

My response I guess is that this

48:52

above all to thine own self be true.

48:56

That doesn't exactly originate with me, but I

48:59

think it actually captures the spirit that I

49:01

want to try to convey that who

49:04

are you fooling? There's

49:06

this quote from Vashlav Havel,

49:08

the Czech playwright politician, which

49:10

describes the way

49:12

of looking at the world of the East

49:15

European dissidents back in the Soviet hegemony days.

49:18

And he says, let's not flow along with the

49:20

crowd down the river of pseudo life. Let's tell

49:22

the truth as we understand it. And I

49:24

want to say that the main audience for

49:26

the truth telling is yourself. Don't delude yourself,

49:28

be honest with yourself. Maybe if I had

49:31

been, I could have

49:33

avoided some of the fiasco's that I report about

49:35

in the book. And you write

49:37

about this how being smart and you're prima

49:39

facie, you're a very smart person on a

49:41

number levels, but being smart, it seems, can

49:44

really get you into trouble because you can

49:46

reason your way into

49:48

things that you want even though you

49:50

know they're not good. And I'm curious

49:52

if you've maybe overcome that or you

49:54

still get yourself in trouble with that.

49:57

I think I'm better. I got

49:59

that from. sponsor, one of

50:01

my sponsors when I was in the

50:03

alcohol and drug recovery movement where

50:06

he said you're a very clever fellow, I

50:08

mean maybe too clever for your own good

50:10

because you can rationalize and you've got your

50:12

theories and you can convince yourself of stuff

50:15

but the basic issue here is don't drink,

50:18

don't use cookie, you know don't use. That's

50:20

all you have to really worry about.

50:22

Did that strike you as too basic? Don't

50:25

use? Did it strike you as too simple?

50:27

I need to complicate it

50:29

because I'm a smart guy. Well yeah I

50:31

think that was my initial reaction although holding

50:33

on by my fingernails living in a halfway

50:36

house full of drunk being

50:38

tempted every day by the streets of inner-city Boston

50:40

to go back to the corners where I used

50:42

to cop but knowing that I took my life

50:44

in my hands every time I did and that

50:47

I was at risk of throwing away everything, the simplicity

50:50

and clarity of it don't use. Today by

50:53

the way, today is the only day you

50:55

need to worry about was

50:57

exactly what I needed to hear. I didn't

51:00

need a whole lot of theory. So

51:02

Glenn you've been around academic

51:05

economics and policy for a

51:07

bunch of years at a

51:09

bunch of well-regarded institutions MIT,

51:11

Harvard, Northwestern, many many panels.

51:15

I could see where you could have written a book

51:17

that described all your research

51:19

on race and politics, the

51:21

failures of the civil rights

51:23

movement, the failures of

51:26

widespread incarceration in this country,

51:28

your papers on affirmative action, but

51:31

instead you wrote about the whole and not

51:33

the donut in a way. You went straight

51:35

for what feels like,

51:38

again I don't know you personally,

51:40

but it feels like a very

51:42

honest assessment of a full life

51:44

with the flaws really front and

51:46

center and I have just a

51:49

I guess an obvious basic question

51:51

for you why? Why did you

51:53

choose to put yourself out there

51:55

like this? You know Stephen I don't

51:57

know if I have a ready answer. that.

52:00

I could have written a book that you described, but

52:03

I wanted to be a little bit more ambitious

52:05

as a literary endeavor

52:08

and challenged myself to see if

52:11

I couldn't say something that my

52:13

children, all of whom

52:15

are adults now and none of whom

52:17

are academics or quantitative social scientists, but

52:19

all of whom want to know about

52:21

their father. What has been

52:24

the response from your family, from

52:26

your children especially, to your book?

52:29

Some of my grandchildren, I have six grandchildren,

52:31

the youngest of whom is in high school.

52:34

Some of them have read some of the books. Shock

52:38

and horror. Really?

52:41

You did that? Being

52:43

appalled. How could you treat my

52:45

mother that way? Or how could

52:47

you speak of my mother in that way? My

52:50

older two daughters, Lisa and Tamara,

52:52

their mother, Charlene, she

52:54

became pregnant at the age of 15 with

52:57

Lisa. She dropped out

52:59

of school. She got her high school

53:01

equivalency degree and went to work pretty

53:03

soon thereafter to help us get

53:06

by when I was a student.

53:08

The way in

53:10

which she's depicted in the book, in

53:13

my older daughter's eyes,

53:17

is unflattering. You

53:20

make mommy look stupid. You

53:22

think you were better than her? You think you were too good for her?

53:25

Glenn is a gay man. He and his

53:28

partner, Rob, live on

53:30

a 45-minute drive from where I am in Providence,

53:32

Rhode Island. We see each other on a regular

53:34

basis. When he

53:36

came out of the closet to me, he

53:38

was, I think, persuaded

53:40

that I was myself a

53:43

closeted homophobe. While I

53:45

said, everything's okay, I'm with you, I've

53:47

got you, he just didn't believe me.

53:50

He didn't believe that I believed it.

53:52

Glenn's relief at

53:55

the way in which I tell the

53:58

story about his coming out. me

54:00

and about my feelings about it and the way

54:02

in which I indirectly

54:05

kind of acknowledge certain

54:08

homoerotic sentiments

54:10

within myself that were

54:13

never acted on, I came to

54:15

realize that I couldn't really come to terms

54:17

with my son's sexuality until I had been

54:19

completely honest with myself about my own. And

54:23

I think that really, really did

54:26

it for him. All these years later,

54:28

he's 35 years old. He came out

54:30

when he was 17. But

54:33

I think I finally gained

54:36

his confidence in the

54:38

judgment that he's okay with me

54:40

however he is. There's

54:44

a line in the book, a lovely line.

54:46

This is right after your wife had died

54:48

and you go to pack up her office

54:51

at Tufts where she taught. You're

54:53

right, I'll spend the rest of my life thinking

54:55

about Linda, her death and what I found in

54:58

her office. Can you just walk us through what

55:00

you found in the office? What

55:02

I really want you to talk about

55:05

is the human capacity to forgive because

55:07

you gave her a lot of

55:09

ammunition to forgive you. She had a lot

55:11

of forgiving to do. Yeah,

55:14

I found two things there actually. I

55:16

found a framed copy

55:19

of the letter. It wasn't the copy,

55:21

it was the letter that

55:23

I wrote her on the occasion of our 10th

55:25

wedding anniversary. We were married in 1983, so

55:28

this would have been 1993. I

55:31

had by the time the 10th

55:33

anniversary come around been accused

55:36

of assault with a deadly weapon against

55:38

a younger woman who was my mistress. I

55:40

was keeping in a secret

55:42

penthouse apartment in the south end of Boston

55:45

while Linda and I were married. But

55:47

at the time we were in this golden

55:50

period, our 10th anniversary, where

55:53

I had come back from the brink. We

55:56

had become Christians. We

55:59

had renewed our marriage. marriage in a very fruitful

56:01

way. Glenn came into the world in 1989. Nehemiah

56:04

came into the world in December of 1991. And

56:09

we were living in a more

56:11

or less idyllic domestic life. I

56:15

was very committed to the relationship and

56:18

I pinned a letter of

56:20

appreciation to my wife for

56:23

her loving, patient, selfless,

56:28

sacrificial support.

56:31

It was sincere and it really moved her,

56:33

I'm sure. She

56:35

had a frame of the letter sitting on

56:37

her bookshelf. And

56:39

among her books, I

56:41

don't remember the author, there was a

56:44

self-help book about forgiveness that

56:47

she had dog-eared,

56:49

written marginalia. She'd

56:51

spent hours with this book. It was really

56:54

quite clear. I

56:56

sat myself down at the desk and I began

56:58

to page through this

57:00

book and look at the marginalia and look

57:02

at where she lingered and the things that

57:04

she was struggling with. And I realized that

57:07

she had made a project out

57:10

of forgiving me. And

57:13

I was floored, I was floored

57:15

by that and ashamed by

57:17

it, but also so proud of

57:19

her. So

57:22

you've been the personal beneficiary of forgiveness quite

57:24

a bit. And

57:26

I'm just curious what being

57:29

the target of all that

57:31

forgiveness has done to you or for you in

57:33

the way that you think about social issues and

57:35

policy issues, whether you feel that the forgiveness that

57:40

was extended to you made you more

57:42

compassionate in any of your political views?

57:46

It did, I think in a number of ways. I mean, one is

57:48

just the straightforward idea on the beneficiary of grace.

57:51

Maybe I could pause for a moment or two before I

57:53

lapse into a condemnatory rant, holding

57:56

everybody responsible for their failures. not

58:00

realizing that they're before the grace of God

58:02

go I. But you do like the condemnatory

58:04

rant. Still, to this day, I mean, you're

58:06

good at it. You enjoy it. And

58:08

I like the way it makes me feel. But

58:11

I'm at least aware of that. I

58:13

tell myself, my cover story is

58:17

that I feel it coming on. I know

58:19

it's a rant, and I know I'm performing.

58:21

So see there, you should still trust me.

58:25

There's a certain righteous, or perhaps

58:27

I should say self-righteous boost

58:30

that one is getting, that I am getting.

58:33

I mean, I can imagine what a

58:35

jazz saxophonist feels like when they're in the

58:37

midst of an improvisational run and somehow the

58:40

notes are just coming. They're not even thinking

58:42

about it. And somehow the

58:44

words are just coming. I have

58:47

this gift, if I may say,

58:49

and just the exercise of that

58:51

muscle feels good. That

58:56

was Glenn Lowry, an economist at

58:58

Brown University, a self-described

59:01

self-righteous truth seeker, and

59:03

much more. His new book is

59:05

called Late Admissions, Confessions of a

59:08

Black Conservative. It is

59:10

one of the strangest and most interesting books

59:12

I've read in a while, roughly 10 times

59:15

more interesting than the kind of book most economists

59:17

write, at least. I'd love

59:19

to know what you thought of

59:21

this conversation. Our email is radio

59:23

at freakonomics.com, and I do

59:26

hope you will recommend Freakonomics Radio to family

59:28

and friends. That is a great way to

59:30

support the podcasts you love. Coming

59:32

up next week on the show, most

59:35

epidemics come out of nowhere, do

59:38

their damage, and fade away. The

59:41

opioid epidemic didn't come out

59:43

of nowhere, and it is not fading

59:45

away. We had a model,

59:48

and we projected over this decade how

59:50

many people will die from opioid overdoses,

59:53

and it was 1.2 million without

59:55

significant changes in policy. Are

59:58

those policy changes coming? And

1:00:00

if not, why not? That's

1:00:02

next time on the show. Until then,

1:00:04

take care of yourself. And

1:00:06

if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics

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think is how he spells it. The proper

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way, let me just say, is a fellow

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