Janesville, wisconsin, after the towns gm plant closed, to the vietnam wars tet offensive and a report on spy rings at american universities. First up is journalist jessica bruder. She reports on the living and working conditions of migrants working in the United States. Its going to be like that. [laughter] my name is conor moran, and i am the director of the book festival. I want to thank all of you for coming out to celebrate the 15th anniversary of wisconsin book festival. [applause] yeah, go ahead. [applause] i am incredibly proud to be the director at this moment. The book festival is livelier than it has ever been, having expanded into yearround events, we are getting more and more people involved. The faces in this room that i know are wonderful. The faces in this room that i dont know are exactly as wonderful. I hope that all of you leave this and invite a friend to something that were doing over the next couple of hours or days or even into november and january of next year. It has truly been a transcendent year for us. We will definitely end the year with the most people who have seen the events in our entire history, and i couldnt be happier about that. [applause] i want to take this time to thank Madison Public Library. They provide an incredible amount of staff time, staff works really hard for me especially over this weekend. They are here right now behind the scenes, and they also give us all of this space for free. That is one of the main things that keeps these events going, is that we have a place to do them, and we have an audience like you who comes to see them. I also want to thank the Madison Public Library foundation. They raised all the private funds from individuals, organizations and businesses that keep these events free and open to the public. And that really, to me, is the other thing that makes the wisconsin book festival so special. Anyone can come to any event for free anytime. And i hope that you care about that as much as i do. And i think because you came at 10 30 in the morning on a saturday, you probably do. So thank you. I also, i love this moment. Kicking off saturday at the book festival, we will do more events today than we do on thursday, friday and sunday combined. But the energy in this room, the energy in this building right now is incredible. My daughter is downstairs seeing her first book festival event. I hope some of you are seeing your first event, and shes going to have to come to a lot more, so, so will you. [laughter] im also delighted to be introducing jess bruder this morning for nomadland. Jess goes out with the people who are really the untold story of the great recession, people who are underwater on mortgages, people for whom Social Security is just not going to make ends meet, and they give up a lot of their safety net. They give a lot of family ties, social ties, Health Insurance up to go travel the country and try to find work. They are new form of migrant workers, they are also potentially a new form of what retirement looks like in america. And jess went out with them and tells us their story. So please put your hands together for jess bruder. [applause] oh, my goodness, all right. This is my first time in madison. And i think this is a larger group of people than were in attendance when i actually launched the book in brooklyn, which is kind of my home turf. So forgive me if ive got deer in the headlights eyes. Im so excited that youre here, and i really appreciate it. Wanted to thank conor and the library and the festival for holding something that draws together such a neat array of books. Im excited to be just a guest here and go check out other books as well. And thank you for coming out on a saturday morning in the drizzle to chat about this project. So im really grateful for that, and i wanted to say thanks. So i think im going to start off by telling you a little bit just about the genesis of the book itself and then read a little bit, and then well do some q a, and id be happy to chat about anything youd like to know more about. But for me so im a journalist, and we read a lot. A lot of times i feel like my students i teach grad students in journalism they expect that ideas jump fully formed out of journalists heads like athena jumping out of zeus nothing begin and that its noggin and its just this immaculate thing that happens. The truth is, honestly, a little more boring. [laughter] so bear with me. There were no lightning bolts here, i just do a lot of reading, and i tend to read a lot about labor particularly in the digital economy. Beneath the headlines of will the robots eat our jobs, how do we hide from them, what is going to happen, theres a lot of other stuff going on just in the daytoday in terms of how people work and what it means to be working in an economy where so many changes are happening at the same time. So somebody who is really kind of addicted to reading about that, i read a story back in 2011 that some of you may have read as well i. Made a lot of headlines, and it came out of a very scrappy little newspaper called the allentown morning call. And as somebody who comes out of newspapers, i love it when a scrappy paper gets a scoop. The scoop told us that in an Amazon Warehouse temperatures were going up to 110 degrees, and rather than open the bay doors which they feared could lead to theft or installing airconditioning, the managers had stationed ambulances outside. And those ambulances were there to, essentially, scoop up people as they dropped. It solves the problem. So i hear all the gasps of exasperation. I can tell you, i felt the same sort of thing, and it kind of blew my mind. Fast forward to the next year and i was reading a magazine story where a young reporter went undercover in a warehouse that was never named, but everybody knew it was amazon. And while i was reading that story, there were two paragraphs that really jumped out at me. This was a piece that ran it was by a fantastic writer named mac mcclellan, then it ran in mother jones in 2012. And there was one woman who told mac, hey, i work here, and i work here and live full time in an rv. Im doing it because i cant afford to retire, and theres a whole program for people like us. And then the story kind of went back to the work day and just the general rigors. But my brain got completely stuck. It was like having a record with a little scratch in it, and it just kept hopping and hopping and hopping, and i kind of couldnt get out of that groove. So when im stuck in a groove, i google. [laughter] i told you, this is a little mundane. I promise it gets better. [laughter] but, yeah, i started googling, and i realized i learned more first, i did bring a little show and tell for you. A crutch, a prop, as it were. But i learned more about amazons program that hires rvers, mostly people who are fulltime rvers and usually traditional retirement age. Its a program called camper force that grew basically, it came into being just several months after the housing collapse in 2008. And it brings workers who are on the road full time to work in warehouses in the months before christmas. So what they do is a lot of pick and pack. Its really difficult. I know a guy in his 70s who was walking 15 miles a day. I know people who have gotten various injuries, and thats just from the sample pool of people ive spoken to myself. And later on in the book i do spend a little time undercover there as well. Although doing that as a woman in her late 30s, as you can imagine, is probably a little different, but i till wanted to get a finish still wants to get a taste for it. Amazon wasnt just a total anomaly. There are thousands of employers hiring people in this demographic doing, having them do everything from working at tourist traps like walmart and dollywood to this theme park call add ventureland where a adventureland where a Conveyor Belt started up too quick, and that was it. To people doing campground maintenance jobs all over the country. As well talk about it later, it can be pretty challenging. So we have that. We have people, i mean, selling fireworks, selling pumpkins, selling Christmas Trees at roadside stands, you name it, theyre doing it. And its kind of the shadow economy x its all just a cycle of jobs. And a lot of folks who i met who are doing it had come from what we might have called the traditional middle class or the traditional housed economy. And for various reasons, i mean, if we think about the fact the federal minimum wage is still at 7. 25, that rent keeps going up and that there are just a lot of really difficult, contending factors going on right now, a lot of people said, screw this. I want something that feels a little different and gives me some more autonomy that might in some ways feel like some kind of freedom. And they found it on the road. Now, its not without challenges, and well talk about those too. But, yeah, ill start off with a little reading, and then well take it from there. So, yeah, this story actually did start as a magazine piece for harpers, but i didnt realize when i started it that i would end up working on it for more than three years and driving more than 15,000 miles in a camper van. [laughter] which was actually kind of the great part. Its a great excuse to be out on the road. People have been asking, did i keep the van. I kept the van. The story, untold and boring story behind the book is the love story of a girl and her van. [laughter] it was supposed to just be a vehicle for this one project, and instead its become a big part of my life. So there you have it. Thats the hot gossip. [laughter] on the foothill freeway about an hour inland from los angeles, a Mountain Range looms ahead of northbound oh, im sorry. You have to forgive me. I have two postit notes, and the other one got pushed in. [laughter] sorry about that. Coffee didnt save me there. Thats not where were starting at all. I begin again. See, i talk about my van, and i get all flustered. [laughter] all right, here we go. As i write this, they are scattered across the country. In north dakota a former San Francisco cab driver, 67, labors at the annual sugar beet harvest. He works from sunrise until after sunset in temperatures that dip below freezing, helping trucks that roll in from the fields, disgorge multiton loads of beets. At night he sleeps in the van that has become his home. Ever since uber squeezed him out of the taxi industry and making the rent became impossible. In campbellsville, kentucky, a 66yearold exgeneral contractor steers merchandise during the overnight shift at an Amazon Warehouse. Its mindnumbing work, and she struggles to scan each item accurately, hoping to avoid getting fired. In the morning she returns to her tiny trailer, moored at one of several mobile home parks that contract with amazon to put up nomadic workers like her. In new byrne, north carolina, a woman whose home is a teardrop style trailer so small it can be pulled with a motorcycle is couch surfing with a friend while hunting for work. Even with a masters degree, the 38yearold nebraska native cant find a job despite filling out hundreds of applications in the past month alone. She knows the sugar beet harvest is hiring, but traveling halfway across the country would require more cash than she has. Losing her job at a nonprofit several years ago is one of the reasons she moved into the trailer in the first place. After the funding for her position ran out, she couldnt afford rent on top of paying off student loans. In san marcos, california, a 30something couple in a 1975 gmc motor home is running a roadside pumpkin stand with a childrens carnival and petting zoo which hay had five they had five days to set up. In a few weeks, theyll switch to selling Christmas Trees. In colorado springs, colorado, a 72yearold van dweller who cracked three ribs doing a campground maintenance job is recuperating while visiting with family. There have always been itinerants, drifters, hobos, restless souls, but now in the second millenium a new kind of wandering tribe is emerging. People who never imagined being nomads are hitting the road. Theyre giving up traditional houses and apartments to live in what some call real estate; vans, secondhand rvs, school buses, pickup campers, travel trailers and plain old sedans. They are driving away from the impossible choices that face what used to be the middle class, decisions like would you rather have food or dental work, pay your mortgage or our electric your welcome trick bill, make a car payment or buy medicine, cover rent or student loans, purchase warm clothes or gas for your commute. For in the answer seem radical at first. You cant give yourself a raise, but what about cutting your biggest expense, trading a stick and brick domicile for life on wheels . Some call them homeless, the new nomads reject that label. Equipped with both shelter and transportation, theyve adopted a different word. They refer to themselves quite simply as houseless. From a distance many of them could be mistaken for carefree, retired rvers. On occasions when they treat themselves to movie or dinner at a restaurant, they blend in with the crowd. In mindset and appearance they are largely middle class. They wash their clothes at laundromats and join fitness clubs to use the showers. Many took to the road after their savings were obliterated by the great recession. To keep their gas tanks and bellies full, they work long hours at hard, physical jobs. In a time of flat wages and rising housing costs, they have unshackled themselves from rent and mortgages as their way to get by. They are surviving america. But for them, as for anyone, survival isnt enough. So what began as a last ditch effort has become a battle cry for something greater. Being human means yearning for more than subsistence. As much as food or shelter, we require hope. And there is hope on the road. Its a byproduct of forward momentum, a sense of opportunity as why the country itself, a bone deep conviction that Something Better will come. Its just ahead in the next town, the next gig, the next chance encounter with a stranger. As it happens, some of those strangers are nomads too. When they meet online or at a job or camping way off the grid, tribes begin to form. Theres a common understanding, a kinship. When someones van breaks down, they pass the hat. Theres a contagious feeling. Something big is happening. The country is changing rapidly. The old structures crumbling away, and theyre at the epicenter of something new. Around a shared campfire in the middle of the night, it can feel like a glimpse of utopia. As i write, it is autumn. Soon winter will come. Routine layoffs will start. The nomads will pack up camp and return to the road, moving like blood cells through the veins of the country. Theyll set out in search of friends and family or just a place thats warm. Several journey clear across the continent. All will count the miles which unspool like a filmstrip of america. Fast food joints and shopping malls, fields dormant under frost, auto dealerships, megachurches and allnight diners, featureless plains, feed lots, dead factories, subdivisions and big box stores, snowcapped peaks. The roadside reels past through the day and into darkness until fatigue sets in. Blearyeyed, they find places to pull off the road and rest. In walmart parking lots, on quiet suburban streets. At truck stops amid the lullaby of idling engines. Then, in the Early Morning hours before anyone notices, theyre back on the highway. Driving on, theyre secure in this knowledge the last free place in america is a parking spot. All right. So in a previous life, my day job was covering startups. I did not really like covering startups. I had a column called start for the New York Times web site, and i got to write about some neat stuff there. But what struck me most was the amount of jargon that id stumbled over and jumped upon on a daily basis whether it was this is innovative, this is disruptive and, you know, nine times out of ten whatever was getting called disruptive would enable you to get your dry cleaning back like three minutes faster. [laughter] and i dont like bullshit very much. [laughter] so one of the great things about being out on the road in a world with a lot less of that sort of jargon was, well, wait a minute, this is disruptive, this is innovative. You want to see people who have managed to completely turn their lives upside down, who are creative, who are resilient. It was kind of exciting because there wasnt really a lot of room for jargon or bullshit because the decisions people made impacted their daytoday so immediately. And just watching what people were able to do with the circumstances that in many times they were handed by a very weird economy was really impressive to me. So its interesting, people really like to pigeon hole ideas. So i think sometimes people want to hear about a book like this, and they expect people to be Walking Around in sack cloth and ashes and bemoaning the economy and yelling about their lot, and thats a huge distortion. Other people want everything to be freedom, road trip, all right, turn up the stereo, and thats a distortion. And life is just somewhere in the middle. But the people i did meet, again, i just cant underscore how resilient, how creative and, i would argue, disruptive they were. So id like to share a bit about one of them with you. Her name is linda may, and i met her when i was writing the initial iteration of this book for harp ors magazine. Harpers magazine. We met in the desert, and if i said to her that, you know, im going to be spending the next three years, i will sleep in my van in the driveway in front of your daughters house, i will be parked next to you when youre camped in the desert, i will stay on the parking pad when youre working as a campground host in the mountains, i think we both probably would have run away screaming. But over that period of time, not only is she resilient, shes incredibly tolerant. And, yeah, really had the generosity to share her story with me. So id like to share a little bit of it with you today. This is where i started before. On the foothill freeway about an hour inland from los angeles, a Mountain Range looms ahead of northbound traffic bringing suburbia to a sudden stop. This wilderness is the southern edge of the San Bernardino mountains, a tall, precipitous escarpment in the words of the United States geological survey. Its part of a formation that began growing 11 million years ago along the San Andreas Fault and is still rising today, gaining a few millimeters each year as the pacific and north american plates grind past each other. The peaks appear to grow much faster, however, when your