You can do so by clicking on the q a icon at the bottom of the stream. The chat function will also built the active in that column youll find a link for purchasing the copy of the new book that evan has just written entitled joe biden. Evan is one of the most talented journalist of his generation. At the first part of his career overseas, will see the first of the Chicago Tribune which he joined shortly after graduated from harvard in which three years later was sent to the middle as to report to iraq and other countries. Next he went to china for the trip, the 2008 shared a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. That you rejoin the new yorker, stayed in china for several more years before moving to washington where he has been covering politics and foreign affairs. An excellent book about china, age of ambition when the 2014 National Book award and was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize. This new book is adapted from occasional series of new yorker articles he has written over the past decade. Including most recently profile of bidens. As evan said biden for him has become an area of accidental expertise. The portrait he presents of the former Vice President in the book highlights bidens extensive experience empathy, fundamental decency and language of healing. This is a compact work put together quickly but written with evans characteristic articulate and insights. Speaking of articulate and insight, and conversation with evan this afternoon will bp buttigieg, former mayor of south bend, indiana and the 2020 democratic president ial candidates. Mayor pete also has a new book out, americas best chance. We already did in the event for that three weeks ago said the mary sue to recognize evans work and also of course put in a plug for his former primary opponent and now enthusiastic picked to be the next president of the United States, joe biden. So evan and mayor pete, taken away. Wonderful, first of all thank you so much. It is an honor and a treat to be participating and a place as iconic as politics and prose. Having now and appeared both virtually and in person. I am delighted to be there once again. Especially for a journalist and writer and observer of the caliber of evan osnos who is so well suited to help really open a window into somebody who on the one hand a well known and recognized figure in u. S. Politics. And on the other hand even now often misunderstood. On the work covering him before, during and since his Vice President and now in his campaign is crucially important for the country to spend time. Especially as i fervently hope and i will not pretend to be neutral on this one, we are talk about somebody who a week from tonight or very soon thereafter we will know as the next president of the United States. So thanks for the chance to have this conversation. Im really looking forward to digging in on a number of subjects with you. Let me begin by asking about the role of fate. I think about the first time i worked up the nerve to ask one of my predecessors as mayor. In fact i was in my 20s thinking about running. If he thought it might be a good idea for me to it run. And instead of directly answer my question, this was governor joe kernan who had his own markable career at indiana after soaring entrance serving as the mayor of south bend. He stared his basket of french fries which felt like for whole minute. Then he turned to means that in politics so much is out of your control. And let me know that the first thing you need to think about is to prepare for that. So in a moment when so Many Americans felix so much is outside of our control, and when someone like joe biden is going to be leading us ford who on one hand and feels like many ways as meeting a kind of lifelong destiny. And on the other hand never knew he would reach this point. I wonder if you can share with this that gripping opening anecdote that you write in the book about his aneurysm in his brush with death. And more broadly what role Vice President s relationship with the uncontrollable has played in his formation, his political life and is likely to put play in his presidency. These. Guest thank you part i will have to say mayor pete is a ludicrous honor to be appeared talking about the subject and im really grateful. The politics to prose and you for taking the time to do it pretty got a very busy schedule right now. And i think, to brad and alyssa for making space for us to talk about this in a week when theres a lot of people thinking about politics. It feels like an important peace of work. And im grateful to be here talking about it. You race for what is me one of the most interesting elements, the story of joe biden. I decided to begin this book with a peace of his biography that is often overshadowed by some of the political milestone milestones. He has a political biography that could fill a book of its own watch in some ways made it all that much more reason to begin with something someone doesnt talk about. The floor of a hotel room in 1987 and he was unable to move his legs. He couldnt figure out how he got there. He had had a brain and years in, he had to it was a ballooning of two arteries in his brain. In the description of it was agony. He was able to get himself on the bed. They got him to a hospital and the surgeons told him that he was at risk of such grave injury. He could have died so quickly that they said had to summon a priest to give last rights even before his wife could get there. And joe biden had been on the campaign trail for months. He had this nagging headache even pushing aside. The strange bit of fate that he dropped out of the race, bombed out of the race as he would tell the story. The fact that he was out meant he was able to have a moment. He was going to give a speech and that was when he was attacked with this aneurysm. So the doctor said to him frankly lucky man. Because if you are on the campaign trail and continued ignoring your symptoms you might be dead right now. And they said joe biden, youre going under the knife are going to give you surgery to try to save your life. You may lose your ability to speak. Somehow in that moment i have to note he did find some bit of humor in it. He set i sorta wish it happened to me last summer. Sure enough they did operate on him. He did of course come through. And it was an ordeal of the kind that shapes a persons conception of their own vulnerability, their frailty, the role as a father and husband and ultimately a political person breeze out of congress for seven months. He comes back and when i think is fascinating is through his life you see this recurring pattern of these moments of extraordinary misfortune. And in your own curious way misfortune. I pursued that very question you started this with. For a long time and key conceptualizes fate and control over ones own circumstances. And he has come to a bit of homespun philosophy about it. He brought from his daddy since everyone in me has some sort of philosophical cosmic ledger in which the highs, the great highs will be compensated by the great lows. And then is how he made sensitive in his own life. He continues his pattern all the way into today. I think sometimes though one of the things thats interesting is he grew up at a time in which there was a great sense of control. This great sense of you could define your fate. That was sort of the american mantra of the postwar period. There is a feeling today that americans have they dont have that sense of control. Fate has something less able to define and something happens to them. I think that is a nerve ending that runs through our politics. That leads to Something Else i wanted to explore with you which is the question of being shaped by the moment or the generation you come from. I came of age in a generation that started out with the big argument being over whether it was the end of history. Whether things and just settle down and all the tough stuff was over. We can ease ourselves into a period of prosperity and consensus with technology. Especially the media. Helping to create that sense of factbased reality and decency. It sounds almost tragicomic now to think back of the way we thought about it in the 90s. That was kind of the period in which i was formed the chain of events that started thousands of miles away. Wound up effecting us very direct way. I think about that with the students that i now spend time with, the undergraduates i teach at the university of notre dame. Almost exactly 20 years apart for me. They too had their lives rocked by chain of events that started overseas. But in a different way also feel that their entire experience has basically been their awareness of the world have been fashioned during president trump, and formed and between the crushing blows of the Great Recession in which they were gradually becoming aware of the world. And the pandemic and anything that happened between. Joe bidens interesting generationally because he doesnt quite sit in any of the generations we have the most convenient political stereotype stereotypes. There is the baby boomer generation, i think you be qualified more is whats called the silent generation. Certainly in the generation that couldve been directly involved in world war ii, but he was not quite of that counterculture, 60s moment which was when we touched on. I think a lot of us are you using and make sense of 2020. I wonder sometimes he is, gets in trouble for being perceived as nostalgic. And the same time has a very uniquely i think humble conception about how transition and transformation might be the hallmark of his administration. So with all that kind of in the atmosphere i wonder what conclusions you grew about how he was shaped by the moment he came of age and how now he meets this a moment, this unique moment of 2020. Guest i found that sort of generational framework really compelling. There is a way in which you talked about in your own work in writing, i see it in joe bidens. There is a point at which everyone is an individual pretty dont assign them characteristics that define who they are. There are certain elements at the moment we come into being a become of age that shape us. Theres a great acacia written by my former colleague eb white who once wrote about the postwar generation per he called them and society of movers and doers. He said as he put it a pompous lock indeed. What he meant was its a community gutfeld as if they could do things because there was this sort of had the tools to create their own reality. But in functional terms their work coming out of world war ii in the Great Depression they were one of the smallest generations there the first generation before them for they had the g. I. Bill. That all kinds of very specific advantages that were allowing them, as a practical matter because there were so few of them. Sociologist called them the lucky few. The generation that biden was a part of. That meant it was easy to become class president for his easy become the star the show. It was easier to get promoted along the way. It does shape our policy. It shapes the way people came to imagine that they had this degree of control. And to some degree they did not need to, thinking of a topic or how to talk more about today they did not need a trusted institution as much. They could do it themselves. Then you fastforward to today. Which millennials are after all the largest generation in American History. They are the most diverse. They have come of age obviously in a time of which you have two recessions in 20 years. And youve given them this very different sense of what they can and cannot control. and i think so much depends on having a touchstone of shared reality so to take one exampl example, the experience of my generation is radically different from the experience of the baby boomer generation and those who experienced the vietnam era. But i can walk into an American Legion and have talking to a veteran because we both had the experience of service. But it will service all the same the same brand sure country and against the touch stone but how American Society communities are supposed to work goes all the way back with voluntary association but we create the circles that overlap you dont want to my generation but i belong to your church. We live in the same neighborhood and there is overlap there is a chance of trust. This is another area of technology that such a conundrum to cut across our existing pockets and theoretically i can be in conversation with an elderly resident of pakistan as my nextdoor neighbor. And with the algorithms that serve up what reinforces our pockets of belongings in those circles that are content and that is dangerous. We are running out of things that we have in common. One of the things is the presidency and part of the point is the symbolic walking symbol of the minimal amount of things and we may not support the same person for president but we have the same president at any given moment and the person that grasps that knows they are walking symbol of the existence and i have learned the hard way because i came to office wanting to do policy and that was my focus play began to lean into how important it was. And this is central to the joe biden appeal and this idea of unity to bring us together across generations and political boundaries as our country has gotten polarized and sliced and diced so what anecdotes did you encounter to shed light on how he could deliver on the appeal and this promise . And there is this idea is it possible to talk about unity . Is that a euphemism to say we will just come to a consensus . That is not what it has to mean what i have always found fascinating if you follow him we have the democratic habits the habits of unity to establish a connection with people in which he tried to transcend those boundaries of belonging. I have been with him overseas in beijing and at ukraine following him for reporting and this is a classic political line that he says to people wherever he goes he sends to people if i had hair like yours i would be president and he has use that and beijing, wellington, i dont know how many times maybe in south bend and it works because its disarming two no matter who he says it to to help political people function and he said to me at one point he and obama have a shared idea that unity is possible thats what brought them together but then of course obama has this ability to transcend to just reach down into your soul to find something i didnt have a name for and put it out there that is what we saw at the 2004 the famous moment when he emerged talk about not a red america will pull america a bit joe biden is more practical and believes a lot of diplomats dont like me because when i start the process of negotiation and domestic policy, my first idea is i cant Say Something to somebody that i think is bullshit so just acknowledge that they have something that is worth listening to now that is a radical motion to say i will have the conversation. But i would be curious im sure you encounter people along the way how can you look at our politics and think unity is possible . How is it not to fortify our own tribe . All of us think of this lens for our experience and that redemption comes local. I have been in so many local political processes no less lucius for one important differences the coalitions are not quite as stable or predicted by what party you are in. The same person who might be at my or vice versa might turn around to be the swing vote that delivers my budget. The same person who i might be going toe to toe with on housing policy could be my greatest ally on the lgbtq policy. And then we encountered each other first as human beings because as a mayor you eat what you cook. You are on the same streets and shopping at the grocery one Grocery Stores of those that you serve. That is our politics is to adjudicate differences. And then to arrive at that and not completely blow each other up because of that strange bedfellows moment. I think the trump moment has open the possibilities for that in many ways because so many things that are contrary to conservative or liberal values maybe once in a generation moment as i think the election will go into force the Republican Party to decide what would be next. There could be an interesting moment for that and there is no native a and this is the quality that comes together with joe biden. Nobody could say has many years in the senate he has is naive or innocent about how things work. But at the same time he says a really do mean that he really does with the need to bring us together and you can feel that. So just a little later we will turn those questions but not before i share a few more. So talking about that shared experience, we often hear about biden is how will he contend with the left side of the party that doesnt agree with him a lot. Into that fundamental instinct and his motives. And with the progressive activist by the degree to which joe biden has been open that what Bernie Sanders was saying that the Biting Campaign had been more open than we expected nobody says this is the trojan horse fantasy but there is a openness with a good example if you take a aoc clear she had her differences with joe biden in the primary and she said look if we were in europe i may not be in the same party as this person they get to the end of the primary joe biden couldve said i dont want anything to do with you instead he said help, right my climate policy. Thats how you ended up with them in a room with a range of different voices representing different interests with his conception of politics they were all given a chance i talked to progressive activist afterwards and they said i pleased and surprised how much they were interested in hearing from me. That is a tone if you learn anything about politics the tone and tenor really does matter. Absolutely that is his instinct and in moments that if you are a sitting or former Vice President of the United States and a 30 something yearold mayor shows up and challenges for the contest for the president i thank you have every reason to say do you thank you are . Or worse. One of the things i appreciated about him at the beginning and the middle and the end of the arc of my campaign when i was up and down he was equally interested just being decent and getting to know you and building you up and in a way i found there was no need for me to change tone with how he treated me and also before and during and after my decision to support him. That speaks a lot to an instinct not only a political s