Senator ben sasse republican u. S. Senator from nebraska thank you so much for joining me. Im excited to discuss your book its called the american vanishing adult and what i find striking about it as i was reading it i think the idea for this probably originated long before you even became usni. Very nonpolitical and its about how we are raising our kids. Maybe you can tell us more about how you decided to write this book. Guest first of all thank you for having me. The book is 100 not about politics and its about a whole bunch of upstream issues in our culture. More important than american politics and you are right by background im a business turnaround guy but im by training an american historian could i spent five years as a college president. Eight years ago i led a turnaround at a college and i cared about this institution. It was in financial trouble. My grandpa went to the college and came back from world war ii and worked at this college. I grew up on this campus because my family. It was in trouble. I wasnt going there for anything connected to student culture but i was restructuring the debt thinking about campus operations and if we would merge or expand the omaha and i got there in one of the things that cause me to lose sleep regularly was what was happening in student culture. You are right that been the senate for two and a half years one of five people who has never been a politician before. This book originates in my mind when i was college president. Host while you were president , that was a key reason why you decided to explore the topic more deeply. Guest the book is about the emergence of a perpetual adolescent. Adolescence is a gift. Its a concept thats really only years old. I realized i was discovering reading and sociology and economic moment. I had all the spin gets that crystallized. One was the story the Christmas Tree that you mentioned. We have a lot of special kids at this college in nebraska and the kids to get to work in the Athletic Department or development and Fundraising Department tend to be some of the best of the best and we have a big athletic arena they are. One year they were decorating the facilities for the holidays. There was a 20foot Christmas Tree to be assembled in a trim entrance to the basketball arena for the bunch of the students were trying to decorate the tree. These are hearty and healthy kids people who should be leaning in in life and they decorated the bottom 8 feet of the tree in a packed up armor leaving. One said hey whats going on why isnt the work done . We didnt know how to get any higher. She said did maintenance recused to bring you a ladder or did anyone think to ask and everyone shrugged their shoulders with passive the day. This book is a constructive book. There is no screaming in the book but there was something there that crystallized this idea of passing day as opposed to figuring out how to solve that actual problem. As we try to unpack in the book there a whole bunch of ways thats playing out across the generations that is grown up insulated from work. Its odd to be 19 and not to have had seven or eight or 10 years of Work Experience in your history. Its a new thing in american life. Host you talk about creeping passively and the decline of agency among the generation of kids coming up right now. What are the forces that are driving back . Another one that stands out is i think was your friends daughter on the cell phone watching youtube videos all day. You see the story is playing out but what is really driving the decline of agency that you are talking about . Guest a couple of things. Theres a difference between production and consumption. Its also something we should feel in our belly because we afflicted. We live in the richest time in the richest place of and in all of Human History. We should be grateful that we are a nation of 320 million overwhelmingly free from material deprivation that is the nondraft most of history but one of the downsides is that is our moment in economic history hasnt been a place where reraise her kids from experience to work as huntergatherers and agrarian spray from the beginning of time to about 150 years ago you just became eight or 10 or 12 or 14 and you did more of what grandma and grandpa did. A few people made a work choice. You were called to the clergy or law form medicine. By and large he didnt have the concept of of choice until the industrial revolution. It was really scary and unsettling. You migrated across the oceans or the countryside and picture job and you had until death or retirement. We have a job choice forever mourn you dont have the exposure to different kinds of work and urban suburban excerpt in Media Consumption environment which is also contributing there. We are in this postindustrial age and we are expecting people to work multiple jobs probably more jobs than ever. I think its one of the Key Driving Forces here and i think one of your arguments is we are not sure of the Younger Generation is prepared to be nimble and able to move from job to job as these disruptions are taking place through the question of whether we can adapt to the economy is that part of it . Guest i think our teens and twentysomethings comingofage are going to have to be more resilient than anybody has ever been before. More is going to be expected of them because of the postindustrial economy. We are not doing enough to celebrate the foundation of future character and we are not having that shared conversation. You mentioned the job change that comes after high school and college. By and large students that graduate in the spring and summer from college are going to changed jobs three times. Not just jobs that change industries three times in their first decade. All the unsettling scary stuff that produce progressivism during the industrialization period was about the idea that Job Disruption created the unsettling ripples in the capital and social networks. A lot of people panicked about is what we are going to experience at warped speed. Not only out of jobs and firms we will have to create a civilization of lifelong learners. Exactly as we have this new challenge where bubble wrapping our kids. Its meant to be constructive but it is directed at parents and grandparents for not having a deliberate conversation about the challenges over soy ends that are going to be required. This is not us not having a conversation about what job retraining is going to look like host i think the closest you get to touching on policies education chapter talking abut the k12 situation that we have and you see obviously a lot of failing. Is it true you homeschool your kids . Guest our kids optin to the Public School your quarter the time then they come on the road. Basically we are geographically split. As a family we live in a farm town outside of omaha where i grew up and my wife was a longtime Public High School teacher and my dad was a Public High School teacher and coach, we love the American Educational system but i think im the only commuting death in the u. S. Senate. My kids are 15, 13 and six and i bring a kid with me every week. We take our kids on the road but we do some tutoring and rehire out some Public Schooling and some on line stuff. We use the khan academy as well. Host in addition to parents having the potential conversations with their kids about economic disruptions happening but can we change in Public Policy so that our Education System is better preparing young people for this new economy . I do want to reiterate the look is 100 not about policy and 99 not about policy but i knew people would want to talk about policy so it was scripted. This wasnt a policy book but here are some the things we talk about. A few of the things i try to flag our number one the concept of grade 13 is a really bad idea. That is a great benefit. At the end of the civil war or 1 of americans were high school graduates. By world war ii almost 80 were high school graduates. Thats not much more than 80 so there hasnt been a lot of change but we created math institutionalized experiences for 14 to 17 and 18yearolds because of the industrial nation it was a melting pot experience. We realized there wasnt a lot of work for kids to do that wasnt dangerous and dehumanizing. Before that kids are grown up as huntergatherers and farming communities doing a lot of work. Our leaders our National Conversation from 1870 to 1940 that we need to institutionalize this for 14 days. Again i think that its been good. Im a strong believer in public funding but i think we should have more debate about institutional form. We need more pluralization of experience to take kids and say we should spend the majority of your waking hours five days a week sitting in a classroom as a passive recipient of knowledge that they think we also need to be wrestling through what its like to be an active learner that pursues the world that travels in the region climbs mountains and learns to work in intergenerational experiences. What does intentional limiting of our consumption that gleick and im worried we havent over learned the lesson as if its an unmitigated good. 41 the 15th governors are remaking their k12 or chrissie, preschool to kindergarten. Thats an important debate about letters and intervention. Thats a debate we need to have that 13 to 16 is a dangerous idea. We dont want to take education and we make it on the secondary model. We wanted to be pluralized institutional forms for higher ed and career job retraining. We want to to teach her kids at some point in your learning you flip the switch and go from being a passive recipient of an instruction at the front of the classroom to be an active learner that wants to throw open the doors of libraries and shakes the trees of nature and demand more burning through with socrates was saying the soil isnt fertile unless the soil is crying out for the sea. He cant machine gun fire hose in the 19 and 20yearold and think theyre going to learn. I want us to be rethinking secondary education on plural forms of a Higher Education model. This guys you mentioned grade 13 narrowminded of one of the ideas that made me think the whole idea about age segregation and how are School Systems are promoting that and i think about my own value of having friends that were much older than me so i could get a much broader view of the world and be more from the late with this but its coming into my life. Tough about houthi age segregation can have the detrimental effect and maybe we should take a closer look at that. Can you explain that a little more . Guest then thing across cultures and across time to have most of your peer cohort people born in your same birth year where you know what experience life from different ages. They are telling you stories about their life the way they developed a work accident places they traveled in way they persevered and people have loved and lost and how they recovered. Turns out if you go down the street and bake cookies with mrs. Nelson down the street that its not as lasting an immediate and supposedly internal and we need lots more intergenerational relationships. There is a curve on Plastic Surgery consumption in america, right now, thats extraordinary. There may be cases and times and needs for certain things but one of the things that is happening isnt just a natural pursuing of the fountain of youth, clean mortality and being scared of death and the fact that the world is broken that is as old as the curse in the garden and east of eden. There is Something Different about being in our time and place that has the narcissistic attachment only to the immediacy of this minute and theres a cotton candy like experience one of the best antidote to that is a little bit of wisdom from knowing different generations the same thing as from knowing about babies and people that are dependent in need them. There is responsibility taking of our 17 yearolds had to know some two yearolds. Will try to figure out how to babysit together as a family, not because its great fun when you have limited leisure time or recreation but im traveling back home but if our kids have to learn to tend to and care for somebody else they recognize that they have responsibilities to their Community Support in terms of potential adolescence that you talk about in the transition to adulthood you talk about the developing logical reasoning skills and a willingness to endure shortterm sacrifices for longterm game. I started thinking about our political system, is congress docked in a fragile state of adolescence . Speak to. Guest the American Experience believes the center of life is not politics. The center of life is not power and we distinguish the words government and community very much on purpose. Alexis went traveled as a travel writer in the 1830s, young democracy in america in such a leading literate audience brought to our folks and our viewers, 1500 pages and it feels like a big heavy book. Finding off of it and lead it in three of seven page chunks in your house. Thats how it was written. He said that he wanted to understand the economic dynamism and was religious diversity and freespeech assembly, price, religion and protest and i was new. This american exceptionalism is about the impact logical truth that Human Dignity built a special community but no one in europe that we have economic dynamism that flowed from our cultural pluralism and theres this dynamism in 1830s in america, transportation revolution, canal revolution, railroad revolution, what led to the factory system later, he wanted to list europeans and since american had economic dynamism they must have the best bureaucrats i went to washington dc to find the meaning of america. He gets here and he says, this place is a swamp dont work that hard. Its not that interesting as we traveled out until 17 other than 25 states, to the capitals, to figure out the meaning of america he wrote back and said the rotary club is the meaning of america for its communal and these people believe in neighborliness and believe in persuasion but is voluntary. It is not compulsory so much of america is about the places where you work and worship for your raise her kids or participate in the rotary or coach pda or volunteer work coach little league. Right now, dc is a strange place because a river of money flows here, five of the seven richest counties are in the suburbs of dc with a lobbyist live and yet, were not focused on anything longterm the Political Parties are mostly just about explaining why the other one is worse than they are and we dont choose the better of two competing longterm vision and we talked the lesser of two evils. There is a perpetual adolescence to the city is rooted in having become less and less historically minded. We are not aware of where he is come from and our shared american narrative is evaporating and were not having a long conversation about policy changes like fiber which were talking about before the show. Host as you explain your arguments you put in historical context. You are a historian and one of the few, train historians of the senate . Guest i think im the only phd in the senate which is another way to persuade my mom i didnt waste six years of my life. Host one thing you learned from the study of the senate is that ashman members would take a year of listening, learning about the institution before speaking on the floor and eu, interestingly, did that. You were first elected in 2014, danny spent a year . Guest a year from election day. Host right, you were interviewing senators, learning about institutions and you eventually delivered the extraordinary maiden speech on the senate floor about the state of our republic and the reductionism and debates, shortterm is him him as you mentioned, in the senate and it struck me brought this book that we not only need right of finalization in the way that we are raising our kids in building our communities but in the fundamental institutions of democracy it seems theres a connection between us to wonder if you see a direct correlation there . Guest the senate sees itself as the greatest deliberative body in the world and it should be but it clearly is not. In the little town i am from, i live outside of 25000 agro dependent town in the middle of nebraska. I can name a dozen notforprofit in my town where their boards to better deliberation than the United States senate. In my town, people distinguish between what problem we are trying to solve before they fight about competing solutions than they distinguish between ends and means. We dont do any of that come to visit dc if you go to the gallery in the u. S. Senate and theres usually someone making a speech of their for cspan and heaven things to cspan and yet, other senators on the floor arent engaging in their debate and its grandstanding and narrowcasting for particular audiences im a business turnaround guy by work history i worked in the Boston Consulting Group and did private equity because the timing i graduated college and 94 and the internet was blowing up sector after sector. I got to go into a lot of processes in sector and industry that were in crisis. One of things i learned is the special privilege of being a newbie. When you get to ask precise questions and i dont have to know the answer to every problem when i get 20 sector and there are a lot of smart people there but there might be a collective action problem in trying to figure out will come next in the travel industry. I work for, big airlines for orbitz and travelocity and xp and came into existence was clear that the Cornerstone Travel agency was going to go away and this new Digital World come into being. I interviewed a lot of people and decided to take that approach when i got to the u. S. Senate. The tradition from the 1790s until about the early 1970s, freshmen senators didnt speak for a year. The tradition went away maybe three40 years ago when i got here i wanted to spend my time getting to know these people and trying to figure out why the senate works because it doesnt. Not focused on longterm issues i interviewed in private many of th