their live. it finds the average child spends less than three years playing a sport and quits by age 11. and look at this. the study all reveals 45% of youngsters played sports regularly in 2008 but last year that number fell to 38%. marty smith is the author of the new book never settle sports family and the american soul. marty is all an espn reporter and correspondent for college game day and joins me now. i don t know a ton about sports, although i know more than people think. it is a good book. i m better than people think. all i have a couple secret sources. what do you think about you grew up playing sports. i did. dana: you write very lovingly about southwest virginia. sports to you meant what? everything. it was everything. it was our outlet. i grew up in an area where our parents shoved us out the door in the morning and said don t come home until we yell for you to eat dinner. we played football, basketball, wiffle ball. that s all we did.
zone, it s not 94, it s not 2010. but it is a moment, particularly when you look at the senate race and as you know one of the things, the historical marketplace does is it fails to give credit often to preventing bad things from happening. and the fact that the democrats did as well i mean the democrats did as well as they did in the senate side shows this. i think there s an ebb and flow in the american spirit, the american soul. it s not that we re all good or all bad. we struggle between light and dark. every era, every moment is defined by the extent to which we win 51% of the time. our better angels win out over our worst instincts. i think this vote two weeks ago and it continues to unfold, it should unfold, it s a bit of american impatience that we think recounts and trying to
things. when he reopened the statue of liberty, everybody should go because they probably don t have enough to do on a day like this they should go and look at his speeches. he gave two speeches around the fourth of july the reopening of ellis island and he talked about how, as he put it in a later speech, that we were all pilgrims from places hurdling through the darkness towards home. that s where we are at our best. i promise history tolles tells us that s what it will be again. john meacham, chicken soup for the american soul thank you for spending time with us. we ll be right back.
what tim helped me do i have never been black a day in my life. i ve never been stopped because of the color of my skin. i ve never been asked for an id while the person in front of me or in back wasn t asked. i ve never been stopped from going into the capitol and i don t where a member pin. and he has been stopped going in the capitol and he does wear a member pin. if i want to understand what it is like to experience life as a person of color, particularly in the criminal justice context i can only get that perspective from him or another person of color. so so what we re trying to encourage people to do is listen listen without prejudice. listen to other people s perspective, not trying to persuade anyone to come around to our way of thinking. just the adviciveness i think is kor oweding the american soul. keep the contrast. i like it. i got a 21-year-old that doesn t agree with me on anything politically. and i love her more than anything in the world. so keep the contrast. bu
about his motivation and his son. he was not there for national security. he was not there because he lost a personal friend on 9/11. he was there because the way he was raised forced him to have compassion. i m sorry, how can we teach two generations at least of children in this country that we have zero tolerance for violence, but we can occupy two countries in asia for almost a decade? it s schizophrenic. but he was in the midst of harm s way, as all these other young men and women are. i think this is the darkening of the american soul. it s where the guilt comes