and
Poland’s ambassador to the United States, Marek Magierowski, on NATO’s frontlines with Ukraine.
26 The Making of Donald Trump Maggie Haberman on Trumps’ life and influences.
37 Music and You Susan Rogers explains what we like about music, and how music affects us.
42 The Future of Downtown San Francisco
cover story: A panel of experts analyzes the problems and proposes some solutions to the pandemic-hit CBD.
50 False Beliefs
Joe Pierre on conspiracy theories and the people who love them.
4 Editor’s Desk by John Zipperer
5 The Commons talk of the club: A pictorial review of the Club’s success ful annual gala; plus, the Club’s president and CEO meets with national security strategy com mission.
7 Program Info
8 Program Listings
Club events in December 2022 and January 2023.
ON THE COVER: How must San Francis co’s downtown change? (Photo by Jus tin Shen/Unsplash.) ON THIS PAGE: Top: Marek Magierowski. (Photo by Sarah Gonzalez/Peopletography.) Right: Susan Rogers. (Photo courtesy Susan Rogers.)
“Make no mistake. History is not on Russia’s side today. And they will not bury us. They will not bury Poland. And they will not bury Ukraine, in spite of the fact that this is the malign intent of Mr. Putin and all his acolytes in Russia.“
—MAREK MAGIEROWSKI“When the right lyric hits you at the right time, it becomes your words.
That record becomes your record. The phrase I like to use is the music of me.“
—SUSAN ROGERSThe Commonwealth Club of California, established 1903
BY MARISA MORTON
As we approach the end of the year and all of the holidays it entails, I want to urge you to make the Club a part of your holiday experience. We’ve got some great ways for you to gather with friends and make new acquain tances during this season.
Tickets are going fast for our “Live Jazz! Celebrate with the Great American Songbook” the evening of Tuesday, December 6. As the title suggests, there will be live jazz music following a reception, thanks to generous support from Taube Philanthropies.
The following week, on Thursday, Dec. 15, it’s our annual year-end program of “The Michelle Meow Show” at the Club. First we’ll hear some interesting new reports on LGBTQ health trends from experts, including UCSF’s Dr. Monica Ghandi (a past recipient of the Club’s Distinguished Citizens Award), and after that we’ll head to our rooftop terrace for some food, drink, and entertainment. (Thanks to Gilead Sciences and Renegade.bio for supporting that evening’s program and reception.)
And if you enjoyed our big New Year’s Eve parties pre-pandemic, you’ll be glad to hear that they’re back. On Saturday, December 31, we’re filling our whole building with good spirits (in both senses of the word), so come enjoy food, drink, live music, art (including live painting, personalized poems and more), and of course the unbeatable view of the fireworks from the Kaiser Permanente Rooftop Terrace of our building. (Thanks to FLG Partners and Francis Somsel for their support for the N.Y.E. party.) Early bird prices end December 12, so get your tickets early and save.
You can get more information and order tickets for all of those events at commonwealthclub. org/events
Take a look at all of our upcoming programs, and subscribe to our weekly email newsletter (to do so, go to commonwealthclub.org/email) and never miss a program. We look forward to seeing you in-person in 2023—a year for which we all have high hopes.
The Commonwealth, 110 The Embar cadero, San Francisco, CA 94105 feedback@commonwealthclub.org
PHOTOGRAPHERS: Ed Ritger, Sarah Gonzalez.
ADVERTISING INFORMATION
John Zipperer, Vice President of Media & Editorial, (415) 597-6715, jzipperer@ commonwealthclub.org
The Commonwealth (ISSN 0010-3349) is published bimonthly (6 times a year) by The Commonwealth Club of California, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105. Periodicals postage paid at San Francisco, CA. Subscription rate $34 per year included in annual membership dues. Copyright © 2022 The Commonwealth Club of California.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Commonwealth, The Commonwealth Club of California, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105; (415) 597-6700; feedback@commonwealthclub.org EDITORIAL
Centered on the theme of Stand By Me, the Club’s 2022 annual Gala honored Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Church; Olga Talamante of the Chicana Latina Foun dation and Caravan for the Children; Gilead Sciences; and World Central Kitchen. Hundreds of people gathered to celebrate the honorees, raise money for the Club, and enjoy good
food, drink, and entertainment. Many people also joined us online to watch the event, which raised more the $1 million to fund the Club’s programs.
Main photo at top of page: The Glide Ensemble sings “Stand by Me.” Inset top: Award-winning journalist Dion Lim was the event emcee. Center left: Ballroom dancers Tais and Arthur entertained guests in the Hormel Nguyen Lounge. Center middle: Club President and CEO Gloria Duffy kicks off the celebration. Center right: Martha Ryan, chair of the Club’s Board of Governors, welcomes attendees. Lower right: San Francisco Mayor London Breed greets the crowd. Bottom right: Michael Boskin presents the inaugural Distinguished Citizen Award in Memory of Charlotte M. Shultz to Rev. Cecil Williams. Bottom left: Lim and the audio-visual team celebrate the successful completion of a live and online program.
Commonwealth Club President and CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy, eighth from the left in the above photo, appears with her fellow members of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States during their late-November meeting at the U.S. Strategic Command.
As noted in the June/July 2022 Common wealth magazine, Duffy was appointed to the commission by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
The commission is working on a strategic threat assessment, and it will make recom mendations to Congress on the most appro priate strategic national security posture for the country. Its report could be submitted by mid-2023.
Board Chair Martha C. Ryan Vice Chair John L. Boland Secretary Dr. Jaleh Daie
Robert E. Adams
Willie Adams
Deborah Alva rez-Rodriguez
Scott Anderson
Dan Ashley
Dr. Mary G. F. Bitterman
David Chun
Charles M. Collins
Mary B. Cranston
Susie Cranston
Claudine Cheng
Treasurer John R. Farmer President & CEO Dr. Gloria C. Duffy
Dr. Kerry P. Curtis Dorian Daley Evelyn Dilsaver Joseph I. Epstein
Jeffrey A. Farber Dr. Carol A. Flem ing Leslie Saul Garvin Gerald Harris Peter Hill Mary Huss Michael Isip Nora James
Lata Krishnan
Alexis Krivkovich
David Leimsieder
Dr. Mary Marcy Lenny Mendonca Michelle Meow Anna W.M. Mok
DJ Patil Ken Petrilla
Bruce Raabe Skip Rhodes Bill Ring George M. Scalise
George D. Smith Jr.
David Spencer
James Strother
Hon. Tad Taube Marcel TenBerge Charles Travers
Don Wen Dr. Colleen B. Wilcox Brenda Wright Mark Zitter
In addition to the Club’s social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Telegram and Facebook, we now can be found on Mastodon Social at mastodon.social/@cw club . . . In the past 12 months, Club programs on YouTube were viewed by nearly 9 million people; our subscriber count is now 155,000.
* Past Chair
** Past President
Dr. Mary G. F. Bitterman* J. Dennis Bonney** Maryles Casto* Hon. Ming Chin** Mary B. Cranston* Evelyn Dilsaver* Joseph I. Epstein** John Farmer* Rose Guilbault*
Claude B. Hutchison Jr.** Anna W.M. Mok* Richard Otter** Joseph Perrelli** Toni Rembe** Victor J. Revenko** Skip Rhodes** Renée Rubin** Richard Rubin* Connie Shapiro** Nelson Weller** Judith Wilbur** Dennis Wu**
Karin Helene Bauer Hon. William Bradley Dennise M. Carter Steven Falk Amy Gershoni Jacquelyn Hadley Heather Kitchen
Amy McCombs Don J. McGrath Hon. William J. Perry Hon. Barbara Pivnicka Hon. Richard Pivnicka Nancy Thompson
The Commonwealth Club organizes nearly 500 events every year on politics, the arts, media, literature, business and sports. Programs
are held online and throughout the Bay Area in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Marin County, and the East Bay. Standard programs are
typically one hour long and frequently include interviews, panel discussions or speeches followed by a question and answer session.
In addition to its regular lineup of pro gramming, the Club features a number of divisions that produce topic-focused pro gramming.
Climate scientists, policymakers, activists and citizens discussing energy, the economy and the environment.
COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/CLIMATE-ONE
The Club’s new education department.
COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/EDUCATION
Inspiring talks with leaders in tech, culture, food, design, business and social issues targeted towards young adults.
COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/INFORUM
Volunteer-driven programs that focus on particular fields.
COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/MLF
Talks with LGBTQ thought leaders from a wide range of fields of expertise.
COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/MMS
Political roundtable paired with a preprogram social.
COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/W2W
Watch Club programs on KAXT, KTLN and KCAT TV every weekend, and monthly on KRCB TV 22 on Comcast. Select Commonwealth Club programs air on Marin TV’s Education Channel (Comcast Channel 30, U-Verse Channel 99), C-SPAN, and on CreaTV in San Jose (Channel 30). View hundreds of streaming videos of Club programs at youtube.com/commonwealthclub
CreaTV KAXT/KTLN TV
To request an assistive listening device, please e-mail Mark Kirchner seven working days before the event at mkirchner@commonwealthclub.org.
Subscribe to our free podcast service on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify to automatically receive new programs: commonwealthclub.org/podcast-subscribe
Hear Club programs on more than 230 public and commercial radio stations throughout the United States (commonwealthclub.org/watch-listen/radio). For the latest schedule, visit commonwealthclub.org/broadcast
In the San Francisco Bay Area, tune in to:
KQED (88.5 FM) Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 a.m.
KRCB Radio (91.1 FM in Rohnert Park) Thursdays at 7 p.m.
KSAN (107.7 FM) Sundays at 5 a.m.
KALW (91.7 FM)
Inforum programs select Tuesdays at 7 p.m.
KNBR (680 and 1050 AM) Sundays at 5 a.m.
KFOG (104.5 and 97.7 FM) Sundays at 5 a.m. TuneIn.com Fridays at 4 p.m.
Prepayment is required. Unless otherwise indicated, all events—including “Members Free” events—require tickets. In-person programs often sell out, so we strongly encourage you to purchase tickets in advance. Due to heavy call volume, we urge you to purchase tickets online at commonwealthclub.org; or call (415) 597-6705. Please note: All ticket sales are final. Please arrive at least 10 minutes prior to any program. Select events include premium seating, which refers to the first several rows of seating. Pricing is subject to change.
• We follow best practices laid out by the CDC and state and local guidelines.
• We strongly recommend vaccination for guests, staff, and volunteers.
• Masks are strongly encouraged while indoors (if you do not have one and would like one, inquire at our front desk for a complimentary mask).
• We reserve the right to require different rules for specific events as necessary.
Our LEED Gold-certified building is designed to cool with outside air, using digitally controlled moveable windows and large ceiling fans. We are deploying additional HEPA filters inside to scrub the air. This is all in addition to increased cleaning of surfaces throughout the building.
On these pages is a preview of in-person and online programs scheduled for December 2022 and January 2023 at The Commonwealth Club of California.
To see more, including event details and to buy tickets, visit commonwealthclub.org and/or subscribe to our weekly newsletter at commonwealthclub.org/mail
Jackson l Little Rock l Memphis l Birmingham l Selma l Montgomery
Robert Greene is the CEO/ Principal of Cedar & Bur well Strategic Consulting, specializing in the application of DEIBA (Di versity, Equity, Inclusivity, Belonging, and Accessibility) technologies in broad-scale organizational development consulting. Prior to Cedar & Burwell, Robert served as a teacher and ad ministrator in educational organizations, de partment leader in for-profit organizations, and trustee and director for non- profit and social entrepreneurship agencies. He brings insightful thinking, writing, and consulting to issues ranging from organizational devel opment and leadership design; diversity and inclusion leadership and management strate gies; wealth and social class disparities; the impact of identity differences in employee culture; and bias awareness and bias resis tance training.
He’s partnered with an extensive and varied list of leaders and organizations including Berkeley Law School; BlackRock; Capital Group; The John D. and Catherine T. MacAr thur Foundation; Harvard-Westlake School; Marin Country Day School (CA); Media Rights Capital Studios; Occidental College; Phillips Academy Andover; St. Mary’s Col lege; SFFilm; and YPO among many others.
Robert earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Brown (econ/political science) and Harvard (administration, planning, and social policy) respectively.
JACKSON
Sunday, March 19
Independent arrivals in Jackson. Trans fer to the Westin Jackson. Afternoon visit to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. This museum provides an honest and painful account of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, be ginning with the back story to the civil rights period – the European slave trade. Evening welcome reception and dinner at the hotel. R,D
JACKSON
Monday, March 20
O ur morning begins at the Medgar Evers Home Museum, where Evers lived and was later assassinated in 1963. Walk past the home, which has been restored to the way it looked in 1963. Continue to Malaco Records, an American independent record la bel based in Jackson, that has been the home of various major blues and gos pel acts. Continue to COFO’s Civil Rights Education Center and meet with Dr. Robert Luckett, Director of the Margaret Walker Center. We also meet with Hezekiah Watkins, a civil rights activist from Mississippi who became the youngest Freedom Rider nearly 60 years ago.
After lunch drive to the former Greyhound bus station, a prominent site from the 1961 Freedom Rides. Contin ue to Farish Street, a thriving center of African-American life in the Jim Crow era and pass by the Collins Funeral Home, where a throng of 4,000 mourn ers marched after the death of Medgar Evers.
Stop by the Big Apple Inn, where we will meet with the owner, Geno Lee, whose unique delicacy, Pig’s Ear Sand wich, has attracted the likes of BB King and even President Obama.
Dinner tonight at Johnny T’s and after enjoy a private performance by a local Blues musician. B,L,D
LITTLE ROCK
Tuesday, March 21
Depart Jackson today for Little Rock, stopping by the BB King Museum.
Drive to Greenwood and the Museum of the Mississippi Delta where we have an authentic delicious barbeque lunch prepared by Mary Hoover, who catered for the movie “The Help.” Continue to Baptist Town with Sylves ter Hoover who shows you their store and the Back in the Day Museum. Tour the community museum which explores the history of African-Amer ican culture in the Delta. Continue on to the nearby town of Money to see the remains of the Bryant’s Grocery, the site associated with the murder of black teenager Emmett Till.
End the day in Sumner at the Emmett Till Interpretive Center and meet with Benjamin Saulsberry where we will learn of the apology resolution written by the community. Enjoy din ner at Sumner’s Grille before continu ing on to Little Rock and the Burgundy Hotel. B,L,D
Wednesday, March 22
Today begins with a visit to Little Rock High School, a national emblem of the often violent struggle over school de segregation. The crisis here forced the nation to enforce African-American civil rights in the face of massive south ern defiance during the years following the Brown decision, a major triumph of the movement. Here we will have the opportunity to meet with Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine.
Continue on to the William J. Clin ton Presidential Center housed in a gleaming modern space overlooking the Arkansas River.
Continue on to Memphis and check-in to the hotel before dinner at a local res taurant. B,L,D
MEMPHIS
Thursday, March 23
Begin the morning at the Lorraine Mo tel, now the home of the National Civil Rights Museum. Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed at the motel on April 4, 1968, the day of his assassination. Enjoy lunch at The Four Way, one of the oldest soul food restaurants in Memphis whose regulars included Martin Luther King Jr, Isaac Hayes and Aretha Franklin. This afternoon, we will focus on Memphis’ music history with a visit to the Stax Museum of American Soul, located in Soulsville. End the day with a visit the Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum, where dark cellars, hidden passageways and trap doors were used by runaway slaves attempting to flee north to freedom. Dinner is at your lei sure this evening. B,L
Friday, March 24
This morning, travel to Birmingham and stop at the 16th Street Baptist Church where a bomb killed four young girls as they prepared to sing in their choir on September 15, 1963. We have asked Rev. Carolyn McKinstry, who was 14 and inside the church when the bomb exploded, to join us on our visit. Across the street is the historic Kelly Ingram Park, site of civil rights rallies, dem onstrations and confrontations in the 1960s and now sculptures provide visual reminders of the past. We have invited Rev. McKinstry to join us for lunch.
After lunch, visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, an interactive museum that tells the story of the Civil Rights Movement. The institute is also home to an expansive archive of nearly 500 recorded oral histories relevant to the period.
Check into the Redmont Hotel
Dinner at leisure. B,L
MONTGOMERY
Saturday, March 25
Drive to Selma and stop at the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the site of Malcolm X’s ad dress in support of voting rights. Three marches from Selma to Montgomery began here and it served as the tem porary headquarters for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Continue to the Selma Interpretive Center for a conversation with Foot Soldier, Annie Pearl Avery whose civil rights work spans decades. Walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge where we will walk in memory of those who were beaten while seeking the right to vote.
Enjoy lunch in Selma at the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Rec onciliation. The lunch will be based on MLK’s favorite food and prepared by Ms. Callie Greer who founded a nonprofit organization, Mothers Against Violence in Selma (MAVIS).
Continue on to Montgomery via the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail and check into the Renais sance Montgomery Hotel. Dinner this evening is at your leisure. B,L
MONTGOMERY
Sunday, March 26 Morning drive to the home of Richard and Vera Harris with their daughter, Dr. Valda Harris Montgomery. Located four doors down from MLK’s parson age, the house was a haven for freedom riders. Enjoy a short walking tour.
End the morning at the Legacy Mu seum: From Enslavement to Mass
Please note that our itinerary involves some time driving from city to city, as well as a fair amount of walking around the sites including climbing up and down stairs. Most days have an earlymorning start and include a full day’s schedule of activities, lectures and special events. Participants must be in good health and able to keep up with an active group. The temperatures in the region average in the 60s - 70s (°F) and can be slightly humid. This program will be covering topics that include violence, and that may be difficult for children. Lectures and discussions are geared to an adult audience. Therefore, we do not recommend this program for people under 16.
Incarceration. Focusing on the history of racial injustice, the museum is situated on the site where enslaved people were once warehoused.
Enjoy lunch at local restaurant before visit ing the deeply powerful National Memorial for Peace and Justice, created by the Equal Justice Initiative. End the day with a debrief led by staff members of the Equal Justice Initiative.
Enjoy a farewell dinner at the Central Res taurant. B,L,D
DEPART
Monday, March 27
Independent transfers to the airport for return flights home.B
Itinerary is subject to change
Traveler Name 1
Address / City / State / Zip 1
Home and/or Mobile Phone 1
E-mail Address 1
SINGLE TRAVELERS ONLY: If this is a reservation for one person, please indicate:
_____ I plan to share accommodations with ___________________
OR _____ I wish to have single accommodations.
OR _____ I’d like to know about possible roommates.
I am a _____ non-smoker / _____ smoker
PAYMENT:
Phone: (415) 597-6720
Fax: (415) 597-6729
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We require membership in the Commonwealth Club to travel with us. Please check one of the following options: _____ I am a current member of the Commonwealth Club. _____ Please use the credit card information below to sign me up or renew my membership. _____ I will visit commonwealthclub.org/membership to sign up for a membership.
Here is my deposit of $________ ($1,000 per person) for _____ place(s). ___ Enclosed is my check (make payable to Distant Horizons) OR ___ Charge my deposit to my credit card listed below.
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Mail completed form to: Commonwealth Club Travel, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105 or fax to (415) 597-6729. For questions or to reserve by phone call (415) 597-6720. _____ I / We have read the Terms and Conditions for this program and agree to them.
Signature Date
The Commonwealth Club (CWC) has contracted with Distant Horizons (DH) to organize this tour.
Reservations and Payments: A $1,000 per person deposit, will reserve a place for participants on this program. The balance of the trip is due 60 days prior to departure and must be paid by check.
Tour Price Includes: Accommodations in hotels as outlined in the itinerary based on double occupancy, prices listed are based on two persons sharing a twin room. Distant Horizons reserves the right to substitute hotels for those named in the brochure when necessary. Distant Horizons will do all possible for single participants to satisfy requests to share rooms. On oc casions when it is not possible, the single room supplement will apply. If Distant Horizons assigns you a roommate and your roommate cancels or changes their mind about sharing a room, you will be liable for the single room supplement. American breakfast (B), lunches (L) and dinners (D) are included as specified in the itinerary. Soft drink is included with lunch and one with dinner; welcome and farewell recep tions include beer and wine; educational program of discussions; entrance fees to monuments; bottled water kept on the tour vehicle; the services of a Distant Horizons tour manager; special activities as quoted in the itinerary; and gratuities to the local guides; tour manager, driver, and waitstaff for included meals.
Tour Price Does Not Include: Air service to Jackson and from Montgomery; meals
not specified in the itinerary; transfers to and from airports; chambermaid gratuities; alcoholic drinks at included meals except for welcome and farewell receptions; rinks other than soft drinks at meals; porterage; personal items such as laundry; email; fax or telephone calls; liquor; room service; independent and private transfers; luggage charges and private trip insurance.
Cancellation and Refund Policy: Notifi cation of cancellation must be received in writing. At the time we receive your written cancellation, the following penalties will apply:
• 120 days or more before departure: no penalty
• 119-90 days before departure: $500 of the $1,000 deposit
• 89-61 days before departure: $1000 deposit
• 60 days before departure: No refund The tour can also be cancelled due to low enrollment. Neither CWC nor DH accepts liability for cancellation penalties related to domestic or international airline tickets purchased in conjunction with the tour.
Insurance: We strongly advise that all travelers purchase trip cancellation and interruption insurance as coverage against a covered unforeseen emergency that may force you to cancel or leave trip while it is in progress. A brochure describing cover age will be sent to you upon receipt of your reservation.
Medical Information: Participation in this program requires that you be in good health. It is essential that persons with any medical problems and related dietary
restrictions make them known to us well before departure. Dietary restrictions must be known well in advance as we may not be able to accommodate all requests and restrictions.
COVID-19: We understand that travel ers have concerns about booking trips due to COVID-19. The Commonwealth Club has instituted a vaccine requirement for their departures. Guests will be required to show proof of vaccination. During the trip, we will follow the recommended precautions from the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), state and local agencies at the time of travel. Our aim is to protect our travelers, guest speakers, local staff and communities we visit.
Itinerary Changes & Trip Delay: This itinerary is based on information available at the time of printing (July 2022) and is subject to change. We reserve the right to change a program’s dates, staff, itineraries, or accommodations as conditions warrant. If a trip must be delayed, or the itinerary changed, due to bad weather, road condi tions, transportation delays, airline sched ules, government intervention, sickness or other contingency for which CWC or DH or its agents cannot make provision, the cost of delays or changes are not included. The minimum group size of this departure is 15 paying participants. Should the num ber of guests drop below 15 a small-group surcharge will be proposed to guests.
Limitations of Liability: CWC and DH its Owners, Agents, and Employees act only as the agent for any transportation carrier, hotel, ground operator, or other suppliers of services connected with this
program (“other providers”), and the other providers are solely responsible and liable for providing their respective services. CWC and DH shall not be held liable for (A) any damage to, or loss of, property or injury to, or death of, persons occasioned directly or indirectly by an act or omission of any other provider, including but not limited to any defect in any aircraft, or vehicle operated or provided by such other provider, and (B) any loss or damage due to delay, cancellation, or disruption in any manner caused by the laws, regulations, acts or failures to act, demands, orders, or interpositions of any government or any subdivision or agent thereof, or by acts of God, strikes, fire, flood, war, rebellion, ter rorism, insurrection, sickness, quarantine, pandemics, epidemics, theft, or any other cause(s) beyond their control. The partici pant waives any claim against CWC/DH for any such loss, damage, injury, or death. By registering for the trip, the participant certifies that he/she does not have any men tal, physical, or other condition or disability that would create a hazard for him/herself or other participants. CWC/DH shall not be liable for any air carrier’s cancellation penalty incurred by the purchase of a non refundable ticket to or from the departure city. Baggage and personal effects are at all times the sole responsibility of the traveler. Reasonable changes in the itinerary may be made where deemed advisable for the comfort and well-being of the passengers.
Registration Commonwealth Club of California CST# 2096889-40 Distant Horizons CST# 2046776-40
MAREK MAGIEROWSKI: Thank you very much for this kind invitation to The Com monwealth Club and also to this marvelous city of San Francisco. As you already know, my previous posting was in Israel. I spent three wonderful years there with my beloved wife—and without our children. [Laughter.] And whenever we travel around to Florida, for instance, or to California, upon landing at the airport we see the palm trees. My wife says, “Finally, I feel like I’m home.” And I say, “What do you mean? You are from Poland, not from Israel.” Still, we miss Israel, and I believe that after my four-year term here in America, we’ll miss America greatly.
Ladies and gentlemen, more than 60 years ago, Nikita Khrushchev—a name some of you may be familiar with, the former secre tary general of the Soviet Communist Party,
he was a frequent visitor to America, quite paradoxically—and in October 1960, he delivered his remarks at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City. He said, “History is on our side. We will bury you.” Of course, you realize whom he was addressing in that speech. He was address ing the main enemy—the United States. “History is on our side. We will bury you.”
Now, when you hear President Putin and you wade through his speeches, how reminis cent his words are of those remarks made by Nikita Khrushchev 62 years ago in New York. History is on our side. We will bury you.
Make no mistake. His tory is not on Russia’s side today. And they will not bury us. They will not bury us. They will not bury Poland. And they will not bury Ukraine. In spite of the fact that this is the malign intent of Mr. Putin and all his ac olytes in Russia to bury Ukraine, to erase Ukraine, to annihilate not only the Ukrainian culture, the lan guage, the roots, [but] the whole nation.
In July last year, he wrote and published a lengthy essay about his vision of the Russo-Ukrainian bond. Again, his main message was that such a bond did not ex ist. Why? Because there is no Ukrainian nation.
Now, one of the most important achievements of Mr. Putin in recent months was strengthening the Ukrainian national identity. We are entering the eighth month of the war, and I believe that nobody in America, in Europe, in Poland and even in Russia, nobody has any doubts whatsoever that the Ukrainian culture does exist. The language, the heri tage. This is what Putin has achieved. We have to give credit to him for that particu lar accomplishment.
Putin decided to carry out that invasion. He wants to erase Ukraine from the map of Europe, because he’s got an obsession, deeply feared in his mindset. He knows very well that Ukraine does pose a threat to his rule in Russia, because what he fears most is a prosperous Ukraine, liberal and
democratic Ukraine. A Ukraine which adheres to European values. I just want to remind you that in 2014, at the time of the so-called Maidan revolution, it was Ukraine’s hypothetical and potential acces sion to the European Union which jangled Putin’s nerves. He was so irritated that the Ukrainians wanted to get closer to the Eu ropean Union in all respects. That’s why, for example, when I talk to my American interlocutors, I always try to persuade them that for Ukraine, it’s much more important today to join the European Union than to join NATO, because Putin fears a European Ukraine more than Ukraine being a NATO member state.
For today’s Russia, one of the most important pil lars of Putin’s rule is the whole alliance with all those post-Soviet repub lics in Central Asia, in the Russian underbelly. Many of them are corrupt. And corruption is an inherent element in Putin’s rule, not only in Russia, but also in the Russian sphere of influ ence. The less corrupt these countries are, the more European, the more democratic, the more liberal in terms of the economic development, the weaker Putin’s rule is.
Poland, as you know, has reacted quick ly and in a very steadfast manner to what happened in Ukraine. It was an incredible effort, a remarkable outpouring of solidar ity and sympathy towards our Ukrainian neighbors. Our president, Mr. [Andrzej] Duda, has been saying repeatedly that we don’t treat them as refugees, we call them guests. They are guests in all our country.
So far, there’s been roughly 6 million people who have crossed the border with Poland. According to recent estimates, about 1.5 million decided to stay in our country. Some of them emigrated to other countries in Europe. Many of them have already returned to Ukraine. But if you add those 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees or guests in Poland to those approximately 1.5 million Ukrainian migrants who had already lived and worked in Poland before the war, it turns out that the Polish pop ulation has increased by about 3 million
Ukrainian refugees who are integrating into the Polish society smoothly, impec cably in an exemplary manner, which is also a lesson for other European nations to follow the Polish model of integration, of migration policy.
A few months ago, just after the be ginning of the war, the Polish Parliament passed a law which essentially facilitat ed the integration of Ukrainian refugees into the Polish labor market. They can now apply for a Polish I.D., which does not make them automatically Polish citi zens. But with that ID, for instance, they
“Putin fears a European Ukraine more than Ukraine being a NATO member state.”Moderator Abraham Sofaer (left) talks with Ambassador Marek Magierowski at the Club.
can set up their own businesses. They can send their children to Polish schools. They are eligible for free health care. And they get a lot of other benefits, like Polish cit izens. We have incorporated more than 200,000 Ukrainian children into [the] Pol ish schooling system; 400,000 Ukrainian refugees have received working permits, so they work legally in Poland. There hasn’t been a single racial incident in Po land. Nobody has ever assaulted anybody because someone spoke Ukrainian in Kra kow or in Warsaw or in Poznań. No ethnic tensions. That’s why I think that this is a
momentous development in our bilateral history, as I said, an extraordinary out burst of solidarity.
Solidarity is of paramount importance for us, not only as an empty term. For us, solidarity means much more than that. Also, because of our historical experienc es. Now, it’s not only about humanitarian assistance, it’s also about military assis tance. Just recently we delivered, for ex ample, more than 240 main battle tanks to Ukraine. Self-propelled howitzers, which are doing an amazing job in the east right now, clobbering the Russian aggressors.
[Applause.]
We are ready to deliver even more. And I believe this is our common obligation to help Ukraine arm itself and to help the Ukrainian armed forces in this struggle and this fight against the Russian invaders, which will be probably protracted. This war, unfortunately, will not end shortly.
This is our common obligation. In our case, it’s also a Christian obligation, be cause we believe that this is a morality tale for all of us. I had various discussions about this particular war, and we were ask ing ourselves—for example, among EU
ambassadors in the United States, I have a vivid memory of one such discussion— whether this is a clash of civilizations. Sam uel Huntington, as you know, published a book about a clash of civilizations. He referred to the clash between Christianity and Islam. I believe that what is going on now in Ukraine is also a clash of cultures. Especial ly when you think about that blatant disregard for human life and for human dignity on the part of the Russian aggressor.
You probably remember all those reports about cre matoriums being brought to the front lines by the Russian army just in or der to burn the bodies of the fallen Russian soldiers. How different it is from our approach. We save ev ery single human life. We rescue every single soldier left behind enemy lines. We evacuated them, and we evacuated their bodies.
Can we talk about a clash of civilizations? I don’t know. But perhaps we should also think about the perception of Russia which has been embedded in the European mentality for so many years. Many Euro pean politicians still think that Russia is an inherently European country because of the Russian culture, be cause of the Russian literature, music, bal let and so on and so forth. I fully agree with that. I do love the Russian language, the Russian culture and the Russian music. But do we have the same roots? Do we have the same history?
Just to remind you that Russians have lived under the communist yoke for more than a hundred years, unlike us. The Bol shevik Revolution took place in 1917 and then the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. But it did not cease to exist. It did cease to exist geographically and polit ically. But I can still see vestiges of Soviet mentality in contemporary Russia. Un fortunately, unfortunately, if it is a clash
of civilizations, I think this is our crucial question we have to not only ask ourselves but also bear in mind, because if this is a clash of civilizations, if this is a clash of cultures, it means that the Ukrainians are fighting not only for their own freedom, not only for their own sovereignty, they are also fighting for ours. They are also defending the free world, the West, from that murderous wave, from that unspeakable aggression and all those crimes com mitted by Russian troops now on Ukrainian soil. But in a few years time, maybe also on Polish soil and in the Baltics, maybe in Fin land. If we don’t stop Pu tin now, he will come back with a vengeance.
Our Ukrainian friends note, rightly, that the war began not on February the 24th. It began in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and an incursion of Russian forces into Do netsk and Luhansk. So the Ukrainians have been wag ing this war for more than eight years.
Another important is sue—and I have to go back to my point about Europe’s approach and Europe’s attitude towards Russia— Europe has always been pretty much naive about Russia’s intentions, not only in terms of foreign policy, but also, for example, in the field of energy securi ty. This is a topic I have been dealing with also here in America for many months. I’ve been saying to my American friends, Look, Poland has always been prescient. We’ve known all along that Putin would one day weaponize energy. And that’s why we were trying to brace ourselves for that eventuality, for that potential hypothetical scenario. So, for example, we inaugurated our first LNG terminal on the Baltic Coast five years ago. A month ago we opened the so-called Baltic Pipe, which now trans fers gas from the Norwegian continental shelf via Denmark to the Polish stretch of
the Baltic Coast. We are buying now gas from American companies, from Qatar and from some other sources as well. We have decided not to renew the long-term contract with Gazprom. From now on, we are entirely independent of imports of Russian gas [applause], unlike some other countries in Europe, which I’m not going to name as a diplomat. [Laughter.] I hope winter will not be as harsh as some predict, but there is a German word which has also somehow been used over here in Ameri ca, in English and in some other European languages—schadenfreude. Yeah, we don’t feel schadenfreude when we look at what is going on now in Germany and all those German politicians—it’s really hilarious. All those German politicians who are so worried that German citizens will have to lower the temperatures in their swimming pools during the upcoming winter by one degree Celsius.
It’s also the question of resilience. We are not as resilient as Russians, and that’s why the final outcome of that confrontation, not only the war in Ukraine, but of that confrontation between the free world and Russia, is not so clear. To what extent can we be resilient in the face of this energy cri sis, for example?
I do believe that there is an ongoing debate in America and also in other parts of the world to what extent America should be focused on the eastern flank, on Ukraine, on this particular region. I have been asking this question to my American partners and colleagues, if there will be political will to keep not only the pressure on Russia, but also to keep financing and assisting Ukraine’s war effort. Many people will tell me, rest assured, that we are not going to relent; we’re going to keep arming Ukraine, we are going to keep transferring weapons to Ukraine.
We are ready to do that as well. But we have to convince our American friends that this is an immediate threat. And of course, I’m talking about this in the context of America’s approach to the Indo-Pacific, because many analysts are now claiming that America is not capable of waging two wars at the same time. But it is my priority, and my government’s and my country’s, to persuade our American allies that what is going on now in Eastern Europe—this is an immediate threat. This
is a race against
“We are absolutely convinced that Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is sacrosanct . . . that America is ready to defend every inch of NATO territory.”
time. That’s why we have to strengthen the eastern flank. And Poland is also arming itself. We know very well, we are absolutely convinced that the Article 5 of the Wash ington Treaty [the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949, the founding agreement of NATO] is sacrosanct, that as President Biden has also said on several occasions, America is ready to defend every inch of NATO territory.
So are we. Poland has been perceived until recently as a net recipient of securi ty. Now we are transitioning to the role of net provider, and that’s why we are arming ourselves at an accelerated pace. That’s why we are delivering our tanks to Ukraine, but we are also buying 250 Abrams tanks from the United States. We are buying weaponry from South Korea. Probably in a few years time, we will become the most militarized country in that part of Europe.
I wish that other countries, other NATO members, chose the same way, because we have to be prepared for any eventuality. It’s very risky to navigate Putin’s mind today. I’ve also used this argument many a time: Poland could be the next item on his menu. I hope it won’t happen. I still believe that he won’t dare carry out a “special military operation” against one of the NATO mem ber states.
But we have to be vigilant, and we have
to stave off this threat preemptively. That’s why we count on our American friends, because we do believe that America has always been, is and will remain our most steadfast ally.
Thank you very much.
ABRAHAM D. SOFAER: Mr. Ambas sador, thank you for those wonderful re marks. As grisly as some of the thoughts you had struck us.
MAGIEROWSKI: It was not my inten tion.
SOFAER: No, I understand. But we un derstand how you feel, and the consequenc es of failure in Ukraine are very real for you.
MAGIEROWSKI: And this war is very real for us. I’ll tell you an anecdote, a little bit grisly as well. When there was a missile strike against one of the Ukrainian bases on the Ukrainian side of the border, but very near the Polish border, just about, I believe, 10 miles, Polish citizens who live on the Polish side of the border not only heard the blast, but the windows and the houses were rattling. So it was the physical experience, of course, not as ominous and as bloody as what we witnessed in Bucha or Irpin and in other cities and villages in Ukraine. But we feel that war also physical ly, to a certain extent.
SOFAER: I’m not surprised. And you use
the word solidarity, that was particularly important to me in my experience with George Shultz and Ronald Reagan in the late ’80s, when we watched a great pope and Lech Walesa lead your country to free dom. So I think it’s a particularly—
MAGIEROWSKI: We always add Marga ret Thatcher to that.
SOFAER: I don’t mind that at all. But I think the notion that we are in a period of solidarity with Ukraine is exactly the right idea.
Thank you for that. Tell me, Mr. Ambas sador, what could the United States do oth er than what you’ve said about staying true to the cause? What could we do to help Po land and to help Ukraine?
MAGIEROWSKI: First of all, let me ex press my gratitude for American leader ship in this conflict. Without American leadership. I can’t imagine that we would be cooperating so strictly and so tightly. When I mentioned Putin’s achievements, it’s not only about strengthening the Ukrainian national identity, but he has also reinvigorated NATO. He has reinforced the European Union. He has enlarged NATO by himself, with Sweden and Finland about to join this organization. Again, we have to give him the credit.
The American leadership is of para
mount importance, particularly in these difficult times. If you ask me what Amer ica should be doing right now and in the future, I think America is doing the right thing right now, approving subsequent packages of military assistance to Ukraine. And the question is, of course, whether we fulfill all the needs in terms of our military help, military aid of our Ukrainian broth ers. The question is, to what extent should we allow, for example, the Ukrainian armed forces to use long-range missile launchers attacking Rus sian territory? The posi tion of the Polish govern ment has always been very clear. We don’t think that it would be too escalatory to win this war.
I had a friendly and a very insightful chat with one of [the] American ad mirals just yesterday. He was asking me an open question: How successful can President Zelenskyy be in this war to become a lit tle bit too successful?
And there is that per sistent question about what Putin would do if he’s finally encircled, if he feels like a caged animal, a cornered rat. Of course, we have heard so many nuclear threats coming out of the Kremlin.
SOFAER: You’re preempting my second question, and we’re all thinking this.
MAGIEROWSKI: This is, of course, a se rious dilemma. But again, I believe—and this is not only my personal opinion, but I think that the Polish government has also expressed its view on multiple occasions— we have to help Ukraine win this war at any cost.
SOFAER: That’s breathtaking in the con text of nuclear weapons. All of us feel ex actly as you do on the merits, I’m sure. But nonetheless, how real is the fear, do you think, that nuclear weapons, tactical nu clear weapons, some of which are far less damaging, they involve far less power than even Hiroshima and Nagasaki? So the fear is that Putin will feel that he can use 1/20th, let’s say, of the force with a nuclear device
and get away with it.
MAGIEROWSKI: He has already got away with many nasty things he has done in the past. I am maybe not terribly opti mistic or slightly optimistic about what he will or what he would choose to do if he feels that he is losing this war. I don’t think that it would be of great political and mil itary benefit for him to use even low-yield tactical nuclear weapons on the battle ground in Ukraine. Humankind has never used a low-yield nucle ar warhead. So, we know what the impact of these two bombings in Japan was in 1945. But we don’t know what would be the impact of a nuclear strike with low-yield warhead, especially on the battle field, not dropping a bomb on an urban center, for ex ample, on a city in Ukraine, but on the front line. And I do believe that Putin is making this calculus right now, and this calculus is not very positive for him. So as I said, I’m optimistic that he will not dare use the nuclear bomb.
Also, because he’s los ing allies right now. I’m talking about some of those post-Soviet republics like Kazakhstan, Romania and many others. If he does choose to use a nuclear bomb, he will probably lose also China. He will also lose India. Now, it’s a very tricky game for these countries, be cause their position is very blurry in terms of criticizing or endorsing Putin’s war in Ukraine. In case of a nuclear conflagration, I think it would be politically suicidal for Putin.
SOFAER: I hope your reliance on his ca pacity to reason is well stated.
MAGIEROWSKI: As I said, I am not a Putin-ologist. It’s really an extremely hard task to decipher his mind and his inten tions.
SOFAER: He reminds me of the untu tored hero in Notes from the Underground who found a way to act against his interests in every possible situation.
MAGIEROWSKI: Absolutely.
SOFAER: Very Russian. [Laughter.] Well, sir, tell us how you think this war might end.
MAGIEROWSKI: And next question, please. [Laughter.]
SOFAER: We are blessed here with the presence of the consul general of Ukraine. And I would like to have your views on that, and I’d like to have his as well.
MAGIEROWSKI: I’m keeping my fingers crossed, of course, for the Ukrainian army to ultimately defeat and crush the Russian aggressor. It’s very interesting to see how Putin was manipulating his own public opinion over the last couple of months. Until recently, he could have sold defeat in Ukraine as victory to his own domestic audience, because an overwhelming ma jority of Russians have so far lived in an
“I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the Ukrainian army to ultimately defeat and crush the Russian aggressor.”Clockwise from top photo: Ukrainian Consul General Dmytro Kushneruk addresses the Club audience; Tad and Dianne Taube with Ambassador Marek Magierowski on the Club’s rooftop terrace; Abraham Sofaer, Club Board of Governors member Colleen Wilcox, and Magierowski.
information bubble. So he could have said, for example, “Okay, we have defended the Russian speaking population of Donetsk and Luhansk from the Nazis in Kyiv.” This is the narrative he was trying to peddle to his own domestic audience.
Now, everybody in Russia knows that this is not a special military operation, that this is a war. And now every 19-yearold lad in Russia knows that he can be sent to the front line overnight. So this has
changed his political standing quite dra matically, because now he cannot sell this possible defeat in Ukraine as victory. It’s no longer the case.
So it has its downsides and upsides. But I believe that this is something he has to be coping with right now.
SOFAER: And you think that would force the war to an end that’s really an end, to a conclusion?
MAGIEROWSKI: He will have to find a
way to. There have been some proposals on the part of some European politicians to offer Putin an off-ramp. And I’ve seen some memes on Twitter and other social platforms arguing that the only off-ramp for Putin would be the Kerch Bridge, which connects Russia proper with Crimea— leaving Crimea and leaving Ukraine for ever. This is the off-ramp we should offer President Putin.
I don’t know how this war will end. The
only thing I’m sure of is that Russia will not be identical after the war, because all these wars of aggression that Russia has waged over centuries in the past have always led to turbulences and to social upheaval in Russia, in tsarist Russia, in Bolshevik Rus sia, and now I believe it will happen also in Putin’s Russia.
SOFAER: Mr. Consul General, we would greatly appreciate your reactions.
DMYTRO KUSHNERUK: Thank you. So, first of all, if you allow me, I would like to [give a] huge thanks to Ambassador Magierowski for his excellent remarks and such a clear, clear understanding about the whole situation between Ukraine and Rus sia. And I would like to use this opportuni ty to thank Poland for the enormous help, enormous support; and all Ukrainians ap preciate that very, very much.
Just on a human level, it’s a huge help to refugees who are called guests. And also, our languages are very similar. We used to say that our language is closer to Polish than it is to Russian, in fact. And of course, the alliance between Ukraine and Poland probably is now the strongest in Europe. And if we combine [our militaries], our army definitely would be the most power ful army in Europe. That’s true.
Actually, as the ambassador mentioned, Poland is the biggest supplier of battle tanks to Ukraine among all the countries in the world—or probably after Russia, be cause we managed to get even more tanks from Russia. [Laughter.] That’s true.
But so how would the war end? Probably so. Ukraine has been recently quite suc cessful in counter-offences in the Kharkiv region, in the south and even now in Do netsk region and Luhansk, which Russia or Putin already announced [as] their own territory.
The Russians now announced this gener al mobilization, trying to mobilize 300,000 people, probably close to 1 million. But this will not make a huge change, because those people don’t know what they’re fighting for and what they are being sent to fight for. And Ukrainians, of course, are fighting for freedom in our country and in the whole Europe. That is a huge, huge difference.
And now Putin tries to intimidate Ukraine, tries to intimidate Europe and the whole world with some other threats. Ukraine, they are not afraid. What our president is always saying [is that] we want
the world also not to be afraid of that. We all take it very seriously, of course, but we should not be afraid.
And as President Zelenskyy says, that NATO should not wait for Putin to make a move; NATO should make a preemp tive pressure. So for him to show what the consequences would be if he ever tries to do it. And the more we do together now to cooperate and to put more pressure on Putin, the more safer the winter would be in Europe.
And again, as President Zelenskyy said, there is no negotiation now possible for us with Putin. We’re waiting for a new president of Russia to arrive.
And after the war will be over—what’s the end of the war for us? Of course, the liberation of all our territo ry—again, as Ambassador Magierowski said, includ ing Crimea. The Russian forces should be withdrawn from Ukraine. Just the lib eration of our territory, that’s the end of the war. And now it seems really re alistic in the future. Thank you very much.
SOFAER: What is it that accounts for what the consul general touched upon, which you explicit ly talked about—what is it that led us to fail to react in 2014 to the invasion and conquering of Crimea?
MAGIEROWSKI: There are so many Eu ropean politicians who still believed that Russia may one day become as European as France, as liberal as Poland, as democratic as the United States, as civilized as the free world. There was that hope, which was not entirely wrong, because I do believe that Russia will one day become more demo cratic and more prosperous and friendlier towards its neighbors.
Russia, for example, has always been one of the most important trading partners for Poland. So losing Russia is not good for Po land; losing Russia as an important player on the international stage. Russia will not vanish. Russia will always be there, even if it by a freak of history disintegrates like the
Soviet Union did at the beginning of the ’90s over the past century.
But Russia and Russians will always be our neighbors. And of course, it’s the pri ority of every nation and every country in the world, also Ukraine, to have a friendly neighbor. We don’t want a confrontation with Russia. We don’t want to wage a war against Russia, let alone the Russians. We want Russia to change, and Ukraine wants to settle this dispute, but not with that pres ident. So that means that even the Ukraini ans believe that Russia can change.
We share the common enemy right now, because we also had a very painful history of our bilateral re lationship with Russia. The memory is still vivid of all the horrendous atrocities committed by commu nists, by Russian troops on Polish soil, for hundreds of years.
But I believe that what we are facing right now is a real and existential threat, not only to Ukraine, not only to Poland, to [the] whole Europe, but also to the United States. Because if we don’t curb Putin’s neo-imperial ambitions, this will lead us to a very perilous shift in the entire security architecture in the world.
If you look, for exam ple, at the relationship at this particular bond between Russia and China, if we lose Ukraine, we will also lose Taiwan, because what China is doing now is monitoring very closely and very meticulously what is going on in Ukraine right now, drawing lessons.
China thinks about its political standing in the international arena in the prospect of 100 years. Unlike many European and American politicians, [who] think about the next press conference and not about the next century.
So it’s not only about Kyiv and Lviv. It’s also about Paris and Washington and Bei jing. So this is absolutely vital for us to de fend Ukraine today and to protect the free world.
“We share the common enemy because we also have a very painful history of our bilateral relationship with Russia.”
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman has chronicled Donald Trump’s life from his rise in New York City to the White House. She tells The Commonwealth Club what she learned. Excerpted from the October 18, 2022, program “Maggie Haberman: Politics, Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.”
MAGGIE HABERMAN, Senior Political Reporter, The New York Times; Author, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America
In Conversation with TIM MILLER, Writer-at-large, The Bulwark; Author, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell
a little ill, a little under the weather. But thank you for sticking with us anyway.
Maggie’s reporting is the reason we know much of what we know about Donald Trump as president. She’s been dogged. She covered him for decades. We won’t say how many. And her coverage has been unparal leled. We want to talk tonight about Con fidence Man, a little bit about the news, a little bit about the psychodrama that is our former president.
How in the hell did you write an 1,800 page book while also being the premiere reporter Donald Trump talked to? Talk to us about the process of that and what you hoped to get out of it.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: First of all, thank you again, Tim. I’m so thrilled to be doing this with you. The book’s not 1,800 pages, for people who are getting scared out there. It will not break your floor or your tables. But it was a challenge in that I didn’t turn to this project in earnest until after the second impeachment trial and thought I was going to have more time.
Trump, and we had this transition where he refused to acknowledge he lost and he did everything he could to try to stay in power. I was reporting daily, sometimes 18 hours a day. So it was a more condensed process than I would have liked. And then over the course of the last year, obviously the news with Donald Trump has not settled down.
So it was bumpy at times. I had a great help in the form of Sasha Issenberg, a won derful California resident who was a free lance editor on the project, and another dear old friend who I actually met, I think around the same time I met you later. But it was it was tough and not something I would recommend.
TIM MILLER: I couldn’t be more excited to be here today to discuss my very old friend, Maggie Haberman—we’ve been friends for a long time. Maggie Haberman’s book is called Confidence Man, and I’m excited to talk with her about that. She’s coming [via Zoom on the stage screen] from New York,
But every time I thought that I was going to be able to start focusing on it, something happened. I didn’t anticipate really being able to work on it until after the election, with good reason, right? The election need ed to be my focus. But then after that, we had the election-that-never-ended with Donald
MILLER: I want to get at some of the curi osity people have about the—I don’t mean this to have a pejorative [implication]—a kind of a symbiotic relationship between re porter and politician, that that’s always the case and certainly the case with you and the subject. Politico [reporter] Michael Kruse did a great profile on you, and he called me to ask me what I thought. One of the questions that he had for me was, “Why do these people talk to Maggie at all? What is your opinion on that?” This did not get included in the story, but I answered why I talked to Maggie, which was Maggie some times knew more about my campaigns than I knew about them. And so I would talk to
PHOTO BY THE DIGITAL ARTIST/PIXABAY
“[Trump has] this fascination with The New York Times, and he is obsessed with the paper in a way that he just isn’t with any other news outlet.”
get information from her.
What’s your answer? Obviously people like to do the psychodrama stuff about Trump, but I don’t think it’s that. What do you think is the real reason why they are participating with you?
HABERMAN: A couple of reasons. I think one is he does have this fascination with The New York Times, and he is obsessed with the paper in a way that he just isn’t with any other news outlet. There’s an ep isode of “The Daily,” The New York Times podcast that ran on I think the very first day of February 2019, which is a conver sation between Donald Trump and A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher, that took place in the Oval Office, where Trump is liter ally saying, “I think I’m entitled to a good story from my paper.” If you want to know how Donald Trump actually feels about The New York Times, there’s your answer.
So that’s one thing. The other is I think that people around Trump—there are as pects of this in the campaigns that you and I dealt with each other on, this was just hyper-charged—everybody is suspi cious of everybody else. Everybody is at war with everybody else, because that is the climate Donald Trump creates. Because of that, people get concerned that someone is spreading stuff about them or saying things that are untrue about them or maybe things that are true about them, and so I think that adds to people’s desire to talk.
In the first year at the White House, I was encountering a lot of people who had nev er met Donald Trump before because they were denizens of Washington and were—
MILLER: Other reporters, or who— HABERMAN: No, [people] who worked in the White House. These were people who were populating this new West Wing who had never met Donald Trump until he came to D.C. or at some point shortly before that. They were kind of shocked at what they were watching. I won’t identify who or even the context, but one person texted me and said a lot of these people have a problem with the law or understand ing the law. And it was pretty jarring. So I think there was a lot of processing going on, and I think that talking to reporters became a part of that process.
MILLER: As you got into that White House, having dealt with him since 2011, you knew what you were getting into more than anybody in 2016. You certainly knew after impeachment, too, when you started this book, what you were getting into. Why are you doing this to yourself?
HABERMAN: It’s my job. This is the life we have chosen, Tim. This is certainly the life I have chosen.
My job is to cover politics; my job is also to cover government. And my job is my obligation. My newspaper, which had not spent a ton of time imagining what the Donald Trump presidency might look like before Election Day 2016; I felt an obliga tion to see it through. . . .
There were plenty of moments before December 2001 when I was like, I’m eager to be moving on from the Rudy Giuliani mayoralty. You know, there were many mo ments during the Bloomberg campaign of that same year where I thought, well, this campaign will be over and we won’t be deal ing with these people going forward. That obviously didn’t work out either. So some of this just comes with the territory.
But yeah, this has been a grind. It’s been a grind for every reporter covering it.
MILLER: Especially after having spent time reading through all this, and there’s just so much, the thing that I liked so much is that it creates these through-lines from Donald Trump the performer as a real es tate man, to Donald Trump the performer as the president.
That, I think, is what made it distinct from the slog of going through all of these
other Trump-era books. I think [it] maybe made you look at things in new light, not stuff that you wouldn’t have known already about Donald Trump, but things that made you think about it.
There was one scene that was very ear ly that I want to bring up, which is Trump standing on the sidewalk outside of Trump Tower, just wanting to be recognized; there was something about that scene I wish you’d talk about, because in a lot of ways it speaks to the pathologies that led us to where we are right now, where he still just wants to be recognized.
HABERMAN: Yeah, I was a little surprised when I heard about this, and then I checked it out with some other people who knew him then, and they said this is something he would do. He would some mornings leave the Trump Tower residence, which is on 56th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He would turn right and he would go to Fifth Avenue and he would sort of creep closer to the entrance to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. And he would peer into people’s faces to see if they recognized him. And this is pre-Art of the Deal. This is mid to early 1980s, when he’s becoming famous, but not hugely famous. Some people would recognize him and it would just be this kind of electric charge for
him to get recognized. There is no clearer motive that he had in running for president, then being celebrated and being famous.
He said to me in one of our interviews, in a moment of pretty surprising candor, he started telling this story about “before I did the presidency,” as if it was like a show. Then he was saying that he had been famous and rich, but he had all these friends who were rich but not famous, and they needed his help to get a table at a restaurant. He makes up one of his apocryphal stories about someone calling him for help; it’s identical to a story he’s been telling since 1984, he first told it to Lois Romano at The Washing ton Post. Then he says, “The question I get asked more often than any other is would I do it again.”
And I said, “What’s the answer?”
He said, “I think the answer is, Yeah, yes; because the way I look at it, I have so many rich friends and nobody knows who they are.” I was really struck that he said it. In fairness, in a later interview, when I asked him what he liked about the presidency, he said getting things done, and he wanted a few accomplishments. But I think his earli er answer was the real one.
MILLER: I want to stay in the past a little bit. But just because that’s so relevant to the big question right now, not that you have any
secret knowledge of what Donald Trump is going to do going forward, but isn’t that just still the relevant item when assessing Trump the person about what drives him, and when trying to decide what is he going to do in the coming years, whether running for president or not?
Like, isn’t he still the guy that just wants to be recognized on the street corner? Doesn’t that make you think he’ll run again?
HABERMAN: It does. I think that there is some id-like impulse that basically just con tinues to want to get back the most atten tion that he ever had and which he thinks was taken from him. I also think there’s an other component, which is that he actually is acutely aware that he is facing significant legal threats right now from the Justice De partment, and he thinks that if he announc es for president that he won’t get indicted, which I think is not right. But I think that’s how he’s looking at it. So I think those two combined factors—because one thing, too, that I write about in the book, is how he tries to inoculate himself in investigations, not by doing things that would avoid pros ecutors looking at him, but once they are, trying to head off trouble.
And so I think both things are in keeping with the theme.
MILLER: That was something that was one of the light bulb moments for me read ing through it, just because it was the part of Trump’s background that I didn’t really know as well, as intimately, just the way that he navigated through the prosecutors in New York . . ., trying carrots and sticks, like trying to determine what type of lever age he had. This does seem a piece of that. And probably how he’s looking at the fed eral investigation. So talk more about how he dealt with some specific examples from that time.
HABERMAN: How he dealt with prosecu tors was something that I started exploring well before we knew about this documents investigation, which I think is actually the one that presents the greatest threat to him. Certainly these January 6 investigations were going on. But he collects people. He has always collected people. Roy Cohn, his mentor and lawyer, was also somebody who collected people.
But in Trump’s case, he developed these relationships after he first gets investigated in the 1970s by a Brooklyn federal prose
cutor who by sheer coincidence, also per formed my wedding ceremony. And I did not know that until I started researching this book, because he later became a chief judge in Brooklyn. But at the time, he con ducted a six-month investigation very qui etly, based off of reporting by Wayne Bar rett, who was the muckraking journalist who really paved the way for all of us who have covered Trump and done investiga tions on Trump, and it didn’t go anywhere.
It was a weak witness. Trump starts brag ging to people about surviving this and complaining about what he had endured, but he had met with investigators without a lawyer present and had basically just con vinced them of his innocence. This became a template for how he would deal with trou ble going forward. He soon a few years later befriends Robert Morgenthau, the Manhat tan D.A., whose jurisdiction was Trump’s area in Manhattan. Morgenthau represent ed a certain type of elite power. So I think that was part of what the appeal was. The part of it was that Trump considered it very useful to have a relationship with the dis trict attorney. And the district attorney was perfectly fine having this kind of relation ship with Trump. He visited Trump at Mar a Lago. You know, he got invited aboard Trump’s yacht.
Trump held a fundraiser for him in 2005. All things that were pretty surprising to me to discover. Trump similarly tried to culti vate Rudy Giuliani, who was the Manhattan federal prosecutor. You see that over time. Fast forward to 2017 when Trump is being investigated by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, and Trump’s immediate instinct is “I want to go talk to Mueller.” His lawyers have to tell him like, “No, you’re not walk ing across the street to go talk to Robert Mueller and leave the White House.” But his belief is that it can all be some kind of backroom deal.
MILLER: Going back about the Trump ori gin story, I don’t know if I get it exactly right from memory, but there’s a press conference and it’s how he’s dealing with the press, and he says that he’s there, but maybe he wasn’t actually there as a young man. And there’s a builder that had done a project and he says that the builder doesn’t get enough credit at the press conference. The politicians get all the credit. And then he writes about it and about how it was a rainy day. And you [re
searched it and it] was actually a sunny day and the guy did get credit.
But talk about that and what he learned from that sort of tabloid-era time about those kind of press.
HABERMAN: It’s interesting. So that story is something that Trump . . . tells this New York Times reporter in 1980, about how in 1964, when he was 18, his father took him to the Verrazano Bridge dedication cere mony, which was this massive project link ing Brooklyn to Staten Island. It had been delayed for decades. Robert Moses, the featured man in The Powerbroker by Robert Caro, who was just this sort of avatar of raw power and real estate and developing power in New York, is the M.C.; and in Trump’s telling, “the rain was pouring down for hours, this poor bridge designer is standing off in the corner and no one’s paying any at tention to him, and he came all the way over here to develop this bridge for us. And that’s when I realized you can’t become anyone’s sucker.” And not being a sucker or a loser is a big thing for Trump.
When I was going over this sort of foun dational moment in Trump’s own telling with a colleague, the colleague said, “Check the weather that day.” I checked and it was sunny, and I checked this ceremony and Robert Moses extolled all praise on this guy. He just in what appeared to be a slip, forgot to mention his name, although other people mentioned his name later on. And in Trump’s mind, it seemed like not having your name said was some massive insult and that nobody could have done some thing like that by accident. It had to be in tentional. It hurt him, and the comments went unchecked for many, many years, but with reason, because who would get stuff like that wrong?
But it became clear just how little of what he says about himself can be relied on. MILLER: You lived in tabloid culture, you were a tabloid [reporter]. I don’t mean that in pejorative, but you worked for the tab loids as a reporter.
Now you’ve gone back to doing some research [and to] refresh your memory of how it covered Trump—this is how the monster was created, right? A lot of it was driven by this desire to see his name men tioned. What are the lessons that you took from the mistakes of the media-Trump re lationship during that era?
HABERMAN: I’ll answer by talking about a scene from one of my favorite journalism movies, which is Shattered Glass, in which at the very end, the character who is playing
I think Chuck Lane, the editor at The New Republic, is explaining to a colleague, Chloe Sevigny, that they have let this fabricator, Stephen Glass, just write these stories. He says something like, “[He] fed us fiction af ter fiction, and we let him because we found him entertaining.”
I was thinking about that the other day in the context of what I think is a significant criticism of the media that covered him in the ’70s, ’80s ’90s, when he was myth-mak ing about himself and describing himself as this titan of industry commensurate with major tycoons in New York City. He just was not either, in real estate or on Wall Street, but he became synonymous with wealth nationally, not just in New York City. He became this sort of ubiquitous brand. That was a failure, because people were just reprinting what he was saying of ten without checking. People told me later that it was pretty known that he lied a lot or said things that weren’t true a lot. But the media’s tendency is to give a benefit of the doubt and assume that somebody might be telling the truth or could be telling the truth.
He got that far after it was clear that he was saying things that weren’t true. Part of the reason is because people found him en tertaining. And that’s why I kept thinking about that Shattered Glass line. For a long time, he was treated like a harmless side show. It really should have been clear in the 1980s in New York City, particularly the late 1980s, when he’s taking out full-page adver tisements in New York newspapers calling for the death penalty for teenagers who had been arrested in a brutal case, an attack on a woman, a jogger in Central Park, whose convictions were later overturned and their confessions were deemed coerced. And he’s taking out a full-page ad saying, bring back the death penalty, bring back our police. These things add up.
MILLER: What was it that allowed him to reach that level in this relationship with the media and the tabloids and what was his unique insight?
HABERMAN: I think that he recognized, at least with The New York Post in partic ular, that he was able to turn himself into a commodity. There just became this sym biotic relationship with the paper in a way that he didn’t have with another paper, but that he did have with some television re porters. There’s these clips of Rona Barrett interviewing him in 1980 where he actually says, “You know, maybe I’ll run for presi dent.” Barbara Walters interviewed him a
bunch, several other people did as well. He made for good copy. He made for watch able television. And he was aware that this was the case. He was aware that people who were perceived as rich were generally not as accessible as he was. And he used that to his advantage.
MILLER: There was a follow up that is related to an earlier question from the au dience that I think is a good question to ask. You went back and looked at how he dealt with all the prosecutors, all the inves tigations into him, financial and otherwise from the ’80s going forward. Fast forward to now and think about the investigations. Is he the type of person that would ever accept some sort of plea bargain to evade punishment by the government? People sometimes talk about these fanciful deals. Maybe Biden tells them that, “Hey, I’ll par don you if you just don’t run.” Do you see anything like that as plausible?
HABERMAN: I think anything is plausi ble with him. No, I really do. I think that you can’t ever assume that he will not do something if he finds a corner of self inter est in it. And I don’t think he wants to be indicted. Now, I know that some of his al
But he has this shamelessness that it’s hard to imitate. On the other hand, he has a sen sitivity to him, too, a little bit like one of my favorite little anecdotes I think in the pro logue in the book, about Trump winning the presidency. That wasn’t my favorite part because of that—that was a dark memory. But it was what happened after, where he said, “You tell Maggie that nobody took my Twitter away.” Like, he had just become the leader of the free world, and yet he was still wrapped around the axle over the fact that you had written a story about how some body had taken his Twitter away from him in the final weeks of the campaign.
This seems to be a person that does have some vulnerability, right? So how do you square that?
HABERMAN: I write in the prologue that he has both over time had the thickest skin and thinnest skin of anyone I’ve ever cov ered. He really [can] slough off stories and coverage that would flatten other people. In some cases, he revels in really prurient coverage that would disturb other people. But then if it gets down to something that he considers a personal insecurity, to your point, he gets very upset.
“He got that far after it was clear that he was saying things that weren’t true. Part of the reason is because people found him entertaining.”
“He got that far after it was clear that he was saying things that weren’t true. Part of the reason is because people found him entertaining.”
lies were talking during the transition—this is pre-January 6, 2021—were talking about whether there was a possibility of negoti ating some kind of a global settlement for him. It went nowhere. So I think it would take his back being more visibly against the wall than it is now for that to happen.
MILLER: It’s hard to imagine that the Roy Cohn in Donald Trump is going to want to cut a deal, especially given the leverage that he’s got.
HABERMAN: It’s funny that you say that. Roy Cohn always said “Fight like hell and don’t back down”; except the first case that Roy Cohn represents Trump in is this hous ing discrimination lawsuit against Trump and his father in their company. And they said, “Well, yeah, have you—
MILLER: —tried—
HABERMAN: Because after several stunts and feints in court the judge gets irritated, it became clear this wasn’t going anywhere. So Trump’s whole “I never set tle” is always the case except for when he does.
MILLER: Another element of Trump that I want to ask you about, that to me is like his his superpower, is his shamelessness.
One was he’s very, very, very sensitive to the idea that anyone is controlling him or puppeteering him. So the idea that his Twitter feed had been taken away from him spoke to that; he didn’t like [it]. It was totally true. We wrote about it in this story the Sunday before the election in a story that leaned way too hard into the idea that he was going to lose. I would like to have that one back in retrospect, but there was a lot of really good reporting in it; because in fairness, most of the people working for him thought he was going to lose, too. But they did get him to take Twitter off his phone and they had staff tweeting, which actually really helped him in those final two weeks.
But he hated the idea that anybody knew that it meant that he was being controlled. So at 11 p.m. on election night, when my colleague calls him to get a comment about him clearly about to win, he says, “Thank you, thank you. Great honor. Great honor. You tell Maggie that nobody took my Twit ter away.” And it was really quite striking. It might have been a little earlier than 11, but it was late.
There was another moment that I write about where he saw me on television. He saw me on Charlie Rose in 2017, which he only saw because he was apparently flipping channels during a commercial on
Lou Dobbs. And he saw me saying that he watches a lot of television; I think I put a number to it, as either 4 to 5 [hours a day]. He was enraged for like two days. He was talking about this and he kept going on and on, attacking me to various random Oval Office visitors. This got back to me. So he’s sensitive on that one, because he thinks it speaks to the idea that people think he’s not that intelligent. And that’s an area of con cern for him.
MILLER: This is the fundamental ques tion that I have then about the difference between the thin skin and the thick skin. When we get to the seriousness of the mo ment that we’re in right now, people are laughing at him and do think he’s stupid about the fact that he continues to advance a preposterous lie about the fact that he won the election. They do think that he’s pathetic. They do think that he’s a baby; they do think a lot of bad things about him. Why does it still a little stick out there? How can a person not crack? How can he not show an inch of self-reflection on the fact that he’s carrying this ridiculous lie on two years hence?
HABERMAN: I would frame it slightly differently. I don’t think that his lies about the election are prompting people to call him stupid. Some are obviously calling him a baby over it. I think mostly people are calling him dangerous over it. And I think that this gets to your point about self-im age, a question about self-image.
I don’t think he minds people thinking that he is saying something that’s danger ous, because there’s two portraits of him that he can tolerate. One is total adoration
and flattery; and the other is that he’s a to tally competent, strong man. This book is neither one of those, as you know, because you’ve read it. But he would rather people think that he is menacing and a little scary or more than a little scary, than think that he’s weak.
And so that’s how he doesn’t crack.
MILLER: The other element of the book that I liked is just the way that you helped explain and categorize, like the moves that Trump has. Right. You see echoes of all the stuff, from the moves that he had when he got backed into a corner in the ’80s all the way through the Reform Party, all the way through now, the present.
Let’s just talk about that a little bit. What are the go-to Trump moves? And then from a journalist [perspective], how you try to parry with those?
HABERMAN: I list a bunch of them in the book. But just off the top of my head, it’s a quick lie. It’s the shifting of blame. It’s the backbiting with one aide about anoth er. It’s the indecision and indecisiveness masked by a compensatory lunge. And we got to see all of this play out in the White House years.
The backbiting with aides was just con stant and dominated everything. The inde cisiveness we got to see over and over and over again. I would argue he was actually really indecisive about what route he want ed to take to try to subvert the election results in 2020, including asking the valet who brings the Diet Coke what he thought he should do, and that was, to me, kind of a jarring moment.
But then once all the other options are
gone, he really he does lunge to January 6, the quick lie we see over and over again. I saw that in one of my interviews with him. I [told] him our understanding was he had been watching television on January 6 during the riot; and he immediately said he hadn’t been, “No, I was in meetings. I rarely had the TV on.” It was just like the immediate reaction.
MILLER: How do you as a reporter deal with such an inscrutable person [as an in terview subject]? How did you think about “What am I going to ask him?”
HABERMAN: It’s a good question. They offered interviews to almost every single book author, including Michael Wolff, who wrote the most damning initial book portrait of that White House; . . . it was not a positive portrayal. It just tells you about Trump’s willingness to engage with reporters.
So initially when they offered this, I was sort of like, I don’t really know what I’m going to get out of this. So I wanted to ask a bunch of questions about his past, be cause he’s the only person who can answer those. I didn’t want to listen to a bunch of filibustering about January 6—and ac tually, I got a fair amount out of it, which is throughout the book. Then I asked for two follow-up interviews. There were mo ments that I let him talk [at length]. And then there were moments where I chal lenged him real-time, where he at one point was suggesting that it was Mark Milley’s idea for them to walk to St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park on May 20, when he was holding the Bible up.
I interrupted him and I said . . . it was ridiculous. He said, “Well, just say it was equal.” So some of it you’re just deciding moment to moment. Those later ques tions that you’re referring to, which are in the book, were a bunch of additional fact checks that I got reporting on later and that I needed to come back and give him a chance answer. In some cases, he was the only person who could answer. In one case, he appeared to confirm, for instance, that he had sent money to the family of a con victed felon who had helped him on one of his earliest building projects, which has been a great mystery in New York City pol itics for a long time. So that was interesting.
He called almost every other question “fake news,” “fantasy question.” “Fantasy question” was [used] over and over and over again, you know, not true, etc.
Sunday, March 12
Arrive in Las Vegas Arrive in Las Vegas independently, and gather at 5:00 p.m. at the Hyatt Place hotel for a welcome drink, intro ductions, and a trip orientation on the park. Dinner will follow near the hotel. Hyatt Place Las Vegas (D)
Monday, March 13
Ash Meadows & Death Valley En route to Death Valley we visit Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. We stop at the visitor center to learn of the plight of the pupfish and explore the Crystal Spring boardwalk. Arrive Death Valley in time to enjoy the park’s visitor center. Enjoy a welcome dinner tonight. Oasis at Death Vally (B,L,D)
Tuesday, March 14
Dante’s View, Salt Creek & Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes Experience Dante’s View, located at 5,475 feet, and take in a stunning pan orama of all 11,049 feet of Telescope Peak. Learn about the creation of the park’s many alluvial fans, the product of millions of years of sporadic yet constant erosion. Later visit Salt Creek and learn about the amazing pupfish, endemic to Death Valley and unique ly adapted to survive in the desert’s harsh environment. End the day with
the chance to walk among the pictur esque sand dunes. After dinner enjoy the chance of some stargazing and see firsthand why Death Valley is an offi cially recognized “Gold Tier” Dark Sky Park. Oasis at Death Vally (B,L,D)
Wednesday, March 15
Zabriske Point, Titus Canyon & Ubehebe Crater
Wake just before dawn and transfer to Zabriskie Point to watch as the sunlight slowly illuminates the surround ing mountains. After breakfast, explore the Titus Canyon narrows and hike among the stratifications of rock mark ing millions of years of geological his tory. The opening of the canyon affords the best chance to see a chuckwalla in its natural habitat. These sizable lizards have evolved to inflate their bodies to wedge themselves in the cracks in the rock they live in to deter predators. Marvel at Ubehebe Crater, site of a mas sive volcanic explosion leaving a pit in the earth over 500 feet deep and a halfmile across. If you feel up to it, enjoy the experience of walking the 2-mile loop around the rim of the crater.
Oasis at Death Vally (B,L)
Thursday, March 16
Golden Canyon & Artist’s Palette
After breakfast, hike through the
multi-hued walls of Golden Canyon toward the Red Cathedral with the option to continue for a longer hike through Gower Gulch. Enjoy a free af ternoon.This evening enjoy the sunset at Artist’s Palette before our farewell dinner.
Oasis at Death Vally (B,D)
Friday, March 17
Devil’s Golf Course, Badwater, Shoreline Butte, Ashford Mill & Las Vegas
As we make our way out of the Park we make several stops. Visit Devils’ Golf Course to admire the rugged salt for mations, and Badwater Salt Flats which at 282 feet below sea level, this salt flat is the lowest place in North America and the eighth lowest place on Earth. The dramatic depth is enhanced by the backdrop of the Panamint Range rising over 11,000 feet. Stop at Shoreline Butte, so called as the horizontal lines in its rock face testify to erosion of the waters of prehistoric Lake Manly that filled Death Valley tens of thousands of years ago. Stop at Ashford Mill ruins, a his toric site where gold ore was processed a hundred years ago. Learn about the mill and search for spring wildflowers. Enjoy a picnic before heading back to Las Vegas arriving by 4:00 p.m. Please book your return flights for 6:00 pm or later. (B,L)
Average temperatures during this time range from 53-80°. Our transportation around the park is by vans. Travelers should be in active good health to par ticipate in this trip. Though walks are not too strenuous, they are over uneven terrain and may require the use of hands and feet to climb over obstructions. Our longest hike is about 2 miles, with approximately 500 feet in elevation gain. Almost all walks are “out and back” so participants can go as far as they like, and then wait for the group to return. For those who would like more active hiking, we can help arrange that during your free time.
The Oasis Resort is situated in a lush oasis surrounded by the vast and arid desert of Death Valley National Park, California. The resort has two properties – the Ranch and the Inn. We have reserved deluxe rooms at the Ranch, which has been welcoming guests since 1933. The property has a gift shop, saloon, a spring-fed swimming pool, tennis courts, a children’s playground, and the Na tional Park Service Visitor’s Center is just a stone’s throw away. One mile away is the 4-diamond Inn. Upgrades to the Inn are available.
Dates: March 12-17, 2023
Group Size: Minimum 8, maxi mum 16 (not including staff)
Cost: $3,695 per person, double occupancy; $4,510, single occupancy.
We are staying in deluxe rooms at the Oasis at Death Valley Ranch. If you would like to upgrade to the Inn, the charges are: $4,435 per person, double occupancy; $5,990 single occupancy.
Included: 1 night at the Hyatt Place, Las Vegas; 4 nights at the Oasis at Death Valley Ranch; daily break fast (5) at the hotels, 4 lunches and 4 dinners; welcome and farewell din ners with beer and wine; round-trip transfers from Las Vegas Airport to Death Valley National Park; tours, en trances, and events as specified in the itinerary; mini-bus transportation for all excursions; gratuities for guides, drivers, hotel and restaurant staff; services of a professional Tour Man ager and Guide; Club host to assist you throughout the program (with a minimum of 15 travelers); the cama raderie of the Club’s travelers.
The son of a National Park Ranger, Fred was born and raised in National Parks and spent much of his childhood exploring the great outdoors. A graduate of MIT, he has traveled in six continents, and lived and worked in four of them. After working some years in a promising management consulting career, Fred decided to follow his passion for travel and outdoor adventure. He entered the adventure travel industry over 20 years ago to design and lead trips throughout the US, Europe and Latin America. In 2002 he founded his own tour company.
Death Valley has a special significance to him having been born when his family lived there and having spent the first two years of his life in park service housing at Furnace Creek (the former name of the Oasis at Death Valley). The park is also the first place he brought guests after starting Black Sheep Adven tures. This trip has been carefully crafted by him with almost 20 years of guid ing experience in the region. Fred is eager to share the beauty of this unique natural desert landscape and the stories of its quirky human history with you.
Not Included: Air transporta tion to and from Las Vegas, Nevada; meals and beverages other than those specified as included; optional excur sions and other activities done inde pendently; trip cancellation/interrup tion and baggage insurance; personal items such as e-mail, telephone and fax calls, souvenirs, laundry and gra tuities for non-group services.
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SUSAN ROGERS: I grew up in South ern California and like a lot of little kids, just was crazy about music. And I really believe that little children, most of them anyway, down deep inside, they kind of know who they are. And I did.
I felt an instinctual attraction to mu sic, but no aptitude for it whatsoever and no desire to even have any aptitude. I didn’t want to play or write or sing. I wanted to in some way serve music, help it come into the world.
So in order to get into that kind of career, when I was 21 years old it was 1978, and you didn’t see women record ing engineers or record producers. You see very few now, much less then. But there was one door I could walk through that would work for me, and that was to become an audio technician and repair the audio equipment. I did that self-taught in electronics and worked my way in and up the chain. Then my lucky break came in 1983. My favorite artist in the world, who happened to be Prince, put out the word that he was looking for an audio technician.
He liked working with women. I had all his records. I had seen him live many times. I was an audio technician, and I was willing to leave Hollywood and move to Minneapolis and be a full-time tech. He transitioned me from the tech chair into the engineering chair, and af ter that I was off to the races.
JOHN BOLAND: Amazing. So over the course of nine chapters, you ap proach music, listening, experience from every angle.
At the very beginning of the first chapter, “Authenticity,” is a recording by a group called The Shags.
The most charitable word I could use to describe this recording would be am ateurish
ROGERS: Okay. [Laughs.]
BOLAND: So let’s go ahead and play “I’m so Happy When You’re Near.” [Plays song.]
So tell us how you selected that song and what does it tell us about authen ticity?
ROGERS: In this book I’m talking about the listener profile, and I’m de scribing things that I learned in grad school about how the brain processes music.
I’m describing the listener profile along seven dimensions. Four of them
are musical, three of them are aesthetic, say ing how we all have a sweet spot on all seven of these dimensions. The one dimension, though, that isn’t well described by science is authenticity, and that’s just something we knew in the recording studio. It has to do with where you as a listener perceive the per formance gestures to be coming from. Is that singer singing her little heart out, is that bass player getting down into the belly button to play that grungy bass part? Or is that play er—John Coltrane, let’s say—technically so proficient that he can blow you away, play ing from genius from the neck up? So when we listen to performers in the studio, we’re assessing is this real or is this authentic?
Now, The Shags are what we call an in dustry band in the sense that people in the music business know about them. There were three sisters who grew up in rural New Hampshire in the 1960s—Betty, Helen and Dot—and their father believed they were going to be great, successful musicians.
So what dad did was pull them out of school, forbid them from dating or seeing boys, made them stay in their room and gave them instruments and said, “You’re
going to play and you’re going to be great on your instruments.” These poor girls are just teenage girls and they’re cut off from the whole world. They didn’t know how to play. But they wrote these songs like “I’m So Happy When You’re Near” that has a genius to it. “I’m so happy when you’re near / I’m so sad when you’re away / Now that you’re here to stay / I’m happy every day.” There’s a purity about it, a kind of Emily Dickinson sort of purity.
So when we listen to them, we don’t hear technique. But what we hear is pure, unadulterated intentionality. It’s teenagers on drums and guitar and bass saying, “I want to tell you something.” It’s the musi cal equivalent of a child’s finger painting. The child’s finger painting is not going to hang in the museum, but the child is say ing, “This is mom, this is dad. There’s my dog. There’s the house. I want to show you something.” And in their lack of technique, you can perceive what they’re trying to do. In the recording studio, you sometimes get musicians who are very well-trained. And they play perfectly, with no heart and no soul at all. They’re just being technically per
fect, unconnected to their hearts and their belly buttons and their groins. The Shags are all heart. So that’s why I wanted to share it in the book—to share their story, but also to point out that great music isn’t always tech nical perfection. Sometimes great music is great intentionality, pure intentionality. In a sense.
BOLAND: It’s interesting that you point out some pretty famous artists appreciate The Shags.
ROGERS: Yes. Because they recognize that’s hard to do. It’s hard to be that pure and that raw and that exposed. As Miles Davis used to say to his musicians, “Play like a non-musician,” meaning play like a three-year-old would play if a three-yearold could make music, how a 97-year-old would play if a 97-year-old had the dexteri ty that he once had. Play like a human. The Shags remind us of this.
BOLAND: So authenticity, realism and novelty are what you refer to as the aesthetic dimensions of a listener profile. And for the rest of the program, we’re going to focus on three of the actual musical dimensions of lis tening, starting with melody.
Frank Sinatra, as you point out in the book, is considered a master of melody, but he was not always a master of melody. We’re going to listen to two Sinatra recordings that will illustrate how he learned to lever age melody to develop what is now his very familiar style.
Let’s first hear Frank singing “All or Noth ing at All” in 1940 with the Harry James Band, and then we’ll hear how he sounded 25 years later, singing “It Was a Very Good Year” live at the Sands in 1966.
So let’s play both Sinatra recordings. [Plays songs.]
Tell us what we’re hearing and what do we learn about melody from Sinatra’s devel opment?
ROGERS: When Sinatra was a young man, 24 years old, he went to a concert at Car negie Hall. He saw Jascha Heifetz—violin ist—perform. Sinatra was sitting near the front, and he saw how Jascha Heifetz would make these long phrases with his bow. Just keep the energy into that bow and not stop those phrases. Sinatra had an epiphany. He said, “If I could just learn to do that with my voice. . . .” So he went to the vocal coach John Quinlan, and Quinlan said, “Stop smoking. Take up running. Increase your lung power.” Well, he kept up the smoking, but he did swim and he did run. And he learned to time his melodic phrases.
Now, in the studio, you hear a singer take a deep inhale. I used to love that with Prince. When there’s a deep inhale at the top of a phrase, it means here it comes, hang on to your hat, because an expert singer is going to take all that lung power and time it out just perfectly. Frank was better than anyone at that, so Frank could deliver this subtext of virility because his phrases could last for so long. Then he’d get to the end of the phrase and you’d hear air come out. He’d still have more gas in the tank, and that’s a subtext of even more virility. So Frank was showing his dominance over other male singers and also playing with melody in such a way that the band had to follow him.
That segment you just heard was actu ally conducted by a very young Quincy Jones—he’s like 26 years old—conducting the Count Basie Orchestra. Frank loved working with Quincy Jones. All the mu sicians who worked with him said “Frank could hold on to a phrase to a length that was beyond belief.” But Frank valued lyrics so deeply; he wanted to make sure you un derstood and paid attention to every single word he sang. So he learned to control his breath and consequently his melodic phrases to make you feel what he wanted you to feel. Hard to do. He was the master. Regardless of what you think of his politics or other aspects about him, we’re just discussing the man’s musicality here. And there was no one finer in his day.
BOLAND: Another superstar with melo dy was Nat King Cole. Let’s hear Nat King Cole singing “Nature Boy” from 1947. [Plays song.]
So what makes Nat King Cole a master of melody?
ROGERS: We were learning about melo dy when we were in the womb in the final trimester. It’s a liquid environment, and we can hear mom’s voice; a little bit later on, we can hear dad’s voice, too, if dad’s voice gets close enough. So we’re learning how humans use the pitch changes of their voices to ex press emotion. After you’re born, caregivers use their voices to express, “All right, baby, you’ve got to calm down, though. Aw, come on, baby. It is time to put on your pajamas” or whatever they do. I don’t know; I don’t have children. Anyway, this is the tone of voice we use to warn you or reprimand you. So from a very early stage, we’re learning what these pitch changes mean emotionally when we grow up. If we become composers, we compose in a way that reflects our native language.
So a great singer who’s also a great pianist like Nat King Cole knows how to use his voice to imbue those lyrics with feeling like a great stage actor. Countless actors have done Shakespeare. They all have the exact
same script. But not everyone is Sir Lau rence Olivier. Not everyone knows how to time those phrases and deliver the weight of those words like a true maestro.
We don’t always know technically what we’re responding to, but we know it intu itively down deep inside when we hear a great performance by a great artist. We’re moved in part because they know the signals that cause us to respond.
BOLAND: Is there a particular part of the brain that’s responding to melody?
ROGERS: Exactly. So our auditory system, our whole brain is very efficient. It divides up tasks. So in case you get an injury, there’s a homologous section on the other side thinking, maybe [it can] help you out if you get an injury on one side of your brain. Our auditory system is no different. We’ve got the two ears and the auditory nerve bun dle comes up through the auditory brain stem, and it terminates right above our left ear. For nearly all of us, this left side of the brain is specialized to be a really fast pro cessor of words. Languages, for the most part, are processed over here. This side is the slow side that doesn’t focus so much on the short little differences between a constant and a vowel, for instance, but focuses on how sound is changing over the long term, which makes it perfect for music.
It’s listening for those pitch changes, for the intonation in your voice. We’re not the only mammal to have developed that. Stud ies with domestic family dogs in full MRI scanners, which is wonderful because the dog lies still in the scanner for three 6-min ute runs with the line scanner with the little headphones. And it’s the same thing. Dogs are responding to dog voices over here on the left, and dog valence, meaning dog emo tions, over here on the right. This is how our brain is, how our brain can independently attend to the lyrics in a song with a melo dy on one side and get a treat—a dopamine hit—from the other one.
If you have friends who say, Oh, I never listen to the words on a record, I used to
“Frank [Sinatra] could deliver this subtext of virility because his phrases could last for so long. Then he’d get to the end of the phrase and you’d hear air come out. He’d still have more gas in the tank.”
think, “Oh, that’s not true.” Now I know it’s true that you can totally be absorbed in the rhythm or in the melody, in the harmo ny, in the style of the record, in the timbre, the sounds of the record, and really not be engaging that side of the brain at all. You’ve got all the treat you need from the other as pects of it.
BOLAND: Now we’re going to hear anoth er version of “Nature Boy” by jazz legend John Coltrane, who was a master of harmo ny. [Plays music.]
You know, I could listen to John Col trane for the rest of the night, but I’ll do that when I get home. Tell us about the role of harmony, working with melody to add nuance or emotional power.
ROGERS: Back in the ’50s and ’60s, most
almost how they function. They shade the main message in a certain way, just how I’m trying to think of a good analog with speech.
But we can choose our words very care fully to imply certain subtexts in our speech. That is very subtle. And harmony works a little bit like that. The great jazz musicians have to be geniuses, because jazz improvi sation has been called “composition in real time.” They’re writing as they go along. They have to understand the head, the lead line, the main melody. They have to know how far they can drift away from that with their note choices to still remain in key, still be communicating something and then work ing their way back to that main melody.
You’ve got to be pretty, pretty talented to
ter Murphy. He’s a scholar and he’s written quite a lot about lyrics. He says if you’re out on the street and you hear somebody say, “Hey, you,” you look around and you can determine right away, Oh, you doesn’t mean me.
But when we’re listening to lyrics, music is really effective at getting us to go into our own heads, shut out the outside world and imagine and daydream, go into our psyches.
You hear that word you in a lyric. For all you know, it could be you. And it feels often like they’re talking to you. They’re talking about you. Sometimes you feel like you’re the singer. Sometimes you feel you’re the one being sung to.
When I was 13 years old, when that song came out, the song is about the tension in America. You know, the Vietnam War, and race relations were in such terrible turmoil. I was 13, so I was in turmoil just from being a teenager. And when that came on the radio, those lines—“All the things you want are real / you have you to complete and there is no deal.” This killed me. It just got me. Yes, the things I want are real now.
Other people can listen to that and it’s not special to them. But when the right lyric hits you at the right time, it becomes your words. That record becomes your re cord. The phrase I like to use is the music of me. When you hear a song that sounds exactly like something you would make if you made music, that’s you. That’s your mu sicality. And this record is a reflection of my own musicality.
BOLAND: Sort of related to that, many of the world’s most popular songs have lyrics that capture the social anxiety and isolation of youth. So when you hear it, it means very different things. But let’s hear a snippet of “In My Room” by the Beach Boys.
ROGERS: [Laughing.] Should have my Kleenex up here.
[Boland plays song.]
listeners were familiar with “Nature Boy,” because it had been a hit for a lot of artists. So most music listeners knew the melody. What Coltrane is trying to do here is play some variations on that melody to wordless ly tell you a little bit more, to imply some thing else about this boy who wandered very far, this strange, enchanted boy. Now, Nat King Cole presents the song as a sweet, tender, poignant, beautiful story. Coltrane is using his horn to say, yea, but there’s some darkness going on there, too, right?
And it’s the harmony notes that do that. The harmony notes are shadows almost. It’s
do that at that level.
BOLAND: Let’s begin our discussion of lyrics with another song. Let’s hear a little bit of “Stand” by Sly and the Family Stone.
ROGERS: You’re picking these songs that are killing me.
[Boland plays song.]
BOLAND: So what gave the lyrics of “Stand” so much power? And I know you particularly felt that. How do the lyrics generally impact our listening experience? Where do lyrics fit in—particularly on this song, but just in general?
ROGERS: Yeah. There’s a fellow named Pe
BOLAND: Tell us about the way the im pact and meaning of lyrics change as the lis tener changes, or as the listener grows older.
ROGERS: So when we are teenagers, the most important problem we need to solve is fitting in in our social world.
A quick sidebar for a fun neuroscience fact. You get adults and teenagers into the lab, and get them in the FMRI scanner and you ask them two questions. What do you think of yourself? And the second question is, What do you think other people think about you?
In the adult brain, those are two sep
arate areas. Here’s what I think of myself, and here’s what I think other people think about me. In teenagers, it’s almost perfect overlap. To a teenage brain, what the other kids think about you is who you are.
So when we’re teenagers, we’ve got these social problems to solve. We don’t know how. We’re not old enough yet. But you can come home from school after a bad day, you can put that record on. If you were in the ’60s, someone like Brian Wilson would sing to you. There’s a world I can go [to] and it’s my world, and I’m private there. And all my worries and my fears come out in that room. I can do my crying and my sighing.
And for men—how often does that get talked about? Women are known to be a lit tle bit more in touch with their emotions and more comfortable with expressing these kinds of sorrows. But with a pure and beau tiful expression, he wrote in that song to say, “I feel vulnerable and I’m hurting.”
And you hear that singer’s voice and you go, “Yeah. Just like me. Just like me.” You bond to that singer.
Now, when you get older, you’ll appreciate it on a different level. In the book, I men tioned a song like Tammy Wynette’s “D-iv-o-r-c-e,” singing about divorce. If you’re a teenager, that means nothing to you for the most part. But if you get older, and that’s a real possibility, that song is going to hit you like a ton of bricks. Willie Nelson’s version of “You Are Always On My Mind.” When you’re older in life, you know what that means. You might not appreciate that at 35.
In short, lyrics are the part of records that solve problems for us, and our problems are different as we age.
BOLAND: It’s interesting the people who write music and lyrics. She just passed away; Loretta Lynn’s lyrics were very important. Talk a little bit about her work.
ROGERS: So the height of elegance is simplicity, and it is damned hard to write a simple song like “In My Room” or “The Pill,” like Loretta Lynn did, or other songs she wrote. It’s hard to take a deep topic and
write about it as a simple truth that’s cap turing what the scholar Joseph Campbell called the universal truth. Simple words. But it’s true of all of us. Loretta’s genius was to be relatable, to get you to feel like I know her. She could be my neighbor. I could have a cup of coffee with her. She’d like me. Bruce
you temporarily become someone else.
I don’t have anything in common with the members of Public Enemy, except that I love Public Enemy. There are rap artists that I love because when I listen to them, when I listen to Chuck D, I feel just a trickle of power when I listen to my hardcore music
Springsteen, for a later generation, had a similar relatability. That’s hard to do.
An artist like Prince or Michael Jackson is lyrically not offering that to their listen ers. They’re offering other things, but not that relatability. Loretta set the standard for how to do that, and there were many, many songwriters who owe her a debt of gratitude for showing us how it’s done.
BOLAND: So particularly lyrics do that, I guess much more than melody would.
ROGERS: Yeah. One scholar wrote, “Music allows us to don the clothing of the person who is singing to us.” So certain lyrics can let
just a little bit. I will never be that, but I want to feel like that. When I listen to the great Lana Del Rey, who I just adore—she’s sexy and she’s attractive and she’s bold and she’s just all the woman that I’m not and will never be—I love feeling for a 3-min ute song like I imagine she feels. This is why many artists are incredibly popular.
Artists like Prince—they’re not the kinds of cars that pass you every day; you won’t pass a Prince on the street. But when you listen to Prince’s music, you get to be some one who’s a fairly rare bird. And that feels good.
“Lorretta [Lynn’s] genius was to be relatable, to get you to feel like I know her. She could be my neighbor. I could have a cup of coffee with her. She’d like me.”
KEVIN TRUONG: I’m a staff writer at the San Francisco Standard, which is a relatively new online news source. My focus at the Standard is on the recovery of San Francisco’s economy in the postpandemic [era]. So today’s topic is of particular importance to me.
There is perhaps no more important topic to San Francisco’s future than this. Quite frankly, we’re at a critical juncture for downtown San Francisco. There were hopes this fall would be a turning point where employees would come back and streets would be filled as they once were. That hasn’t happened. While things have certainly improved from the near-apocalyptic emptiness of the early days of the pandemic, today many buildings remain quiet on most days, and human traffic on sidewalks and streets is still limited. Some people have returned to offices, but hybrid work is becoming the norm. Recently, Mayor London Breed recognized that her push to have employees return to the office has had limited impact and began to voice the need for new solutions to turn around and enliven downtown.
That’s what we’re here to discuss. Let’s be clear: We need a vibrant downtown and vibrant neighborhoods. It’s not an either-or. A vibrant downtown helps the city overall, including the payments in property taxes, which help fund the city’s government and services. And it’s clear we have reached a pivot point. We need new solutions and approaches to bring back downtown San Francisco.
Robbie, I’d like to start with you. You are the head of the Downtown S.F. Partnership. Tell us a little about your organization and give us a little scenesetter for what we’re going to be discussing today.
ROBBIE SILVER : Sure. For those who don’t know, the city has 18 what we call community benefit districts. We were formed in January 2020, two
return San Francisco’s downtown to its vibrant pre-pandemic state? From the November 1, 2022, program “The Future of Downtown San Francisco.”
KATE SOFIS, Executive Director, Office of Economic and Workforce Development
KEVIN TRUONG, Reporter, San Francisco Standard—Moderator
months exactly before the pandemic hit. We serve the financial district and Jackson Square neighborhoods. It’s about 43 square blocks. Seventy-five percent of my budget actually goes straight to our cleaning and safety. We cover most of the downtown economic core, which has just been completely devastated economically based on the pandemic.
We need to re-imagine downtown. This is a pivotal moment [when] we can actually make a difference and do something about it. Through our work with our board of directors, we decided that we needed to do something in the public realm as a start. Why not do something that we can control, which is what happens on our alleys, on our back streets?
There’s so much layered history in downtown San Francisco. The waterfront used to come right up to Montgomery, you know, back in the day. There’s buried ships underneath the financial district. That’s a story that we can play out in the public realm in pilots that we’ve done so far to date.
Battery Street was closed to vehicular traffic in 2020 as part of Better Market Street. Obviously, we didn’t want this to be representative of a new public space in downtown San Francisco. We worked directly with the city and commissioned local Mission based artist Claudio Talavera-Ballón to paint a 1,900-square-foot mural right on the street. It took five weeks to complete; we now have new landscaping and we activate this on Tuesdays and Thursdays for lunch time.
Another pilot that we did very successfully last year that we’re bringing back this year is called Let’s Glow, S.F.. It became the largest
holiday projection mapping event in the United States, where we projection-mapped light shows on four downtown properties for 10 nights in December. This was a test case for us, because we wanted to find out if we gave people a reason to come downtown, would they and would they come after 5 p.m.?
Well, 40,000 people did. We sent out a survey and had a QR code after each light show and we asked if you came downtown, did you go shopping? Did you go out to eat? Did you go out for cocktails? And we calculated about a $2.2 million economic impact. So we’re very excited to bring back Let’s Glow this year, December 2nd through the 11th, which will be on One Bush [Street], the [Pacific] Stock Exchange, the corner of Commercial and Leidesdorff, and the historic Hobart Building.
But we knew doing pilots wasn’t enough. We needed to have a strategic plan in front of us to guide us. What could we do in the public realm to make downtown San Francisco reimagined and more meaningful not only to the workforce, but how do we market and create a new destination to our own downtown or to our own San Francisco residents and folks throughout the Bay Area?
This is why we brought on Laura Crescimano, principal of Sitelab, to come up with a very comprehensive 150-page “Public Realm Action Plan,” which is on our website, downtownsf.org
LAURA CRESCIMANO: Site Lab Urban Studio [is] a studio of about 20 urban designers, architects, landscape architects based in San Francisco, and we work across a
scale of projects. We work on large-scale plans like the Fifth and Mission Project, which just opened its first phase in a public park at Fifth and Mission, to work for Google on going from a traditional office park to a mixed-use neighborhood environment, and particularly on public grounds and how we bring together all of the parts that make cities places we want to be and that we know and love. So we were personally invested, I would say, in engaging with Robbie and his team on downtown and what the future is here downtown.
I think we’ve all seen the ways in which neighborhoods have thrived, and we’ve seen a return to the neighborhood; and at the same time, downtown has a different role. It is a center of gravity. All roads lead to downtown. It’s a job center where we have capacity for over 200,000 jobs. And it also is a historic hub with all these layers of history. So there’s these bones here that we want to think about; what is its next life? It’s been through actually many lives in San Francisco. We all know the impact of the pandemic, that the trips to downtown have gone down. We’ve seen them creeping back up, particularly for work, although in a different format than maybe we saw before.
But downtown also used to serve for tourism and as a social destination and as shopping destination. Those trips have also taken a hit. So we’ve been thinking about what does it mean to think about this next era of downtown?
We did a lot of research and we had a survey to the public with nearly 900 responses as well as on-the-ground observations and internet surveys and other research. One of
the interesting things to us was to ask people what they would want to see, what would make them come back to downtown or return to downtown more. Clearly we know that there are sentiments both real and perhaps perceived about cleanliness and safety. But interestingly, we put on the list the resolution of COVID. Would that be the thing that would make you come to work more? And it was nearly last on the list. In fact, people wanted to see more like a kind of liveliness to downtown, more green, more restaurants, more gathering places, more art, more of that greater social purpose to downtown.
I should note that this is not the answer to all things for downtown or for the city of San Francisco. We are coming at it from one perspective, which is the public realm, to start to plant seeds really for a different way of looking at our city and our downtown. So how can downtown be more of a social destination? And that social destination is for workers to have more reasons to come down to the office. It’s a choice to come to the office now for many workers—not all, but for many—but also families, that test case of, Would you come at night? What are the reasons to come at night or stay after work or come on a weekend?
. . . There are no public parks in this district. There are privately owned public spaces, plazas, and 30 percent of the land is streets and alleys. In particular there is this great alley fabric. So we are looking at how do we reconsider that? Part of this plan is to say we need to move from one-offs to campaigns. How do we get more people
together and think of this really as a public and private endeavor that we do together, from improving those public [and] privately owned public spaces to just literally planting more trees, having more green to make this more compelling to walk down the street?
We also did quite a bit of work on saying where would we have the most impact? We identified a series of locations and . . . places where we see a combination of a lot of the ingredients that could be great hubs, great moments in downtown—whether it’s [because] they have active restaurants, they have public spaces, they have kind of cool historic buildings. They also have potentially already planned projects by the city. So how do we bring that all together for impact? And in this example, commercial night staff, this is where we’re starting actually. We’re moving from that broader plan to our first pilot from that plan action area, commercial and night staff.
The historic coastline of San Francisco did run through this area [of land along the San Francisco waterfront], and [there are] buried ships. So there’s a really interesting story here, as well as restaurants and current life. And we’re hoping to see even more future life with San Francisco vendors and artists. [There is an] alleyway and historic building there that we think is just calling out for a kind of art and reconception. We are doing this as a coordinated effort with the downtown, as a partnership, as well as the city and the mayor’s office in terms of being a pilot. So essentially, this is not a one-off. This is actually setting up a model so that this can then be this idea
of activity. Hubs can be catalyzed around the downtown to start to seed from the ground up with local business owners. That kind of energy in the public realm might compel people to rethink downtown and to come, whether it is for work or to bring your family on a weekend and evening.
TRUONG: Thank you so much, Laura. And I’m going to bring up Kate. Maybe you can just talk a little bit about your reactions or your thoughts on this “Public Realm Action Plan” and what it could really do to transform some of these areas we’re talking about here.
KATE SOFIS: I’m head of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, which in normal times focuses on helping businesses who are here grow, helping people secure employment. So in the context of all of that work and our response in the last few years to COVID, it is really an amazing moment in time where we will continue to do all of that. But we really have come together with community, with our mayor to deeply understand both the crisis but also the opportunity we have right now to literally fill our vacancies in our economic core with new kinds of businesses, new kinds of activities. And of course, all of that sits within the public realm. I think from where we are, and our mayor shares his vision, we wholeheartedly agree that it is this moment in time that we actually have to refill our economic core with what we maybe thought was kind of missing.
I can speak to my own personal narrative. I’ve been in the city now for almost 30 years. My teenage kids were born and raised here. We still live here. And one of the things that
drew me and so many people I know to San Francisco was our creative culture. This place where you could come from, a city like Buffalo, New York, where I grew up, where there wasn’t a lot of economic opportunity, where my parents, who were symphony musicians, were struggling economically to make it work. And then here was San Francisco, this beacon of tolerance, this place where you could come and try new things, whether it’s new things in technology or new things in the arts. So I think it is a critical moment, but also an exciting moment where we can seize the opportunity to create new kinds of experiences in our economic core.
There’s both sort of the landscaping and the hardscaping, but there’s also the programing. So a lot of what our office is doing in partnership with the Downtown Partnership is looking at how we can take some city investment to help more arts organizations have opportunities to either have pop-up performances or installations or live music, or even how we can look at retail vacancies, restaurant vacancies as well on the ground floor. And again, as we are trying to have more dining experiences and more artistic experiences, how we can both have short-term pop-up programing as well as look for longer-term tenants in those spaces.
I do want to say when I speak about and use the words economic core— and this is
something we’ve been sort of trying to find the right language—when we in the city are looking at our recovery, we really have looked at a number of, let’s call them zones that make up these parts of our city, the greater downtown, if you will, that have historically had so many of our jobs and our destination retail. So we think of it including the Financial District, but we are also looking at . . . South of Market and Union Square and down to Mission Bay, how these three areas really work together.
So as I respond to questions, I’m really always going to be thinking about downtown proper, but also how it relates to these areas immediately around it.
TRUONG: I want to bring up our final guest, Wade Rose from Advance S.F. Wade, maybe you can give a little bit of background on Advance S.F. itself and what role you’re trying to play in the revival of what we’re talking about in the downtown core.
WADE ROSE: Advance San Francisco grew out of an organization that’s been around for maybe 40 years, which represents the interests of the larger employers in San Francisco. A few years ago, there was internal discussion about whether the typical way of representing interests of the business community, which primarily concerned tax policy and regulatory issues, was sufficient to really represent the interest of the business community. The determination was that it wasn’t and that we needed to, as a community, be concerned about the broad width of issues in San Francisco. So we changed and in January rolled out Advance San Francisco. It’s chaired by Larry Baer and Lloyd Dean. Larry, of course, is head of the Giants; Lloyd is head of Dignity Health, which is a 140-hospital company, which [has been] headquartered here in San Francisco since 1856.
What we are interested in is essentially the quality of life in San Francisco, because it has so much to do about the ability of businesses and for the economy to prosper here in the city. So we have three main concerns. One is safe and clean streets—[that] goes to crime and street behavior. We are concerned about the affordability issues in San Francisco, because it is literally the most expensive city in the country to live and work in. And we are very concerned about economic viability, which is the issue which all of us are working together on, and has to do with the viability of the business district at the moment, but [also] the viability of business overall in San Francisco. So we are engaged with Kate and others, Robbie especially, on working on these issues to essentially repopulate the downtown
area, because we’ve lost approximately roughly 300,000 people per day [downtown] less than what we were experiencing in 2019. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of transactions which support middle income jobs. The ramifications of that population leaving San Francisco literally in a month—90 percent of all office workers left in March 2020—is gigantic and huge.
So that’s one of the reasons we’re all here talking about how do we build a new future for the city.
TRUONG: I want to touch on the “Public Realm Action Plan,” a 150-page report. You talk about turning downtown into more of a pedestrian-friendly zone. You mentioned some aspects that make it already pedestrian friendly. The fact that it’s one of the flatter neighborhoods in the city, for example.
But you also note that what is necessary to do that is a lot of temporary but potentially permanent street closures. Now that we have both the public and private here on stage, what are you doing to kind of cut the red tape, streamline that process? I mean, we’re already starting to see some of the issues that are coming when shared spaces are having to move into this permanent phase.
So how are we going to try to balance those concerns and make it easier to make some of these actual pilots happen?
SILVER: In our plan, we actually call it street
“We need to re-imagine downtown. This is a pivotal moment [when] we can actually make a difference and do something about it.”
—ROBBIE SILVER
“People wanted to see more liveliness to downtown, more green, more restaurants, more gathering places, more art.”
—LAURA CRESCIMANO
openings, because we’re opening the street to pedestrians and visitors and workers alike. And we are very thankful that the city stepped up during the pandemic and actually brought out Shared Spaces. I think as community groups, we [had] been waiting for a permit process like Shared Spaces, and it just provides a great foundation for any nonprofit, any community group to close down a street, to have an activation, a festival, a block party.
As an active user of Shared Spaces, it’s just been wonderful for us to use. As Laura mentioned, 36 percent of our downtown is our streets, and I think that just leaves a huge opportunity to identify which streets, which alleys, which areas in the economic core we can actually turn over to pedestrian activity. The public realm plan is a wide scope, and we’re looking at all kinds of activation, anything from new seating and greenery and art to other festivals and block parties. We’re also looking at vacant spaces. The vacancy rate here in San Francisco is continuing to be an issue and climbing.
So the Public Realm Plan does address how do we re-energize the ground floor and also use the streets in front of those ground floor spaces as sort of a co-activation space?
SOFIS: I might be able to just jump in from the public side of the house. I think Shared Spaces is actually a great example of what is possible if the city is both being very focused on cutting through red tape on behalf of the private sector, but also importantly, if we’re doing it in partnership with the private sector.
In fact, people have said to me who haven’t been to San Francisco in a while—and we are actually starting to see a decent uptick in the return of tourism, still not where we want to be, but we’re at 70, 80 percent, which is a lot better actually than where we have been lingering in the 40 to 50 percent range with return-to-office—but what people say is having all of these shared spaces for outdoor dining, while it was a response to a crisis, turns out now that we have completely challenged the idea that San Francisco is not an outdoor city; and that’s a wonderful thing. That crisis forced the city to have to work much more quickly and collaboratively across departments.
Shared Spaces, again, as one example, we have a cross-departmental team that has been in partnership working with the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, our CBDs, even as we make those spaces permanent. These cross-departmental teams, which include the Department of Public Works, the fire department, my office, etc., I think has been a really important teachable moment for the
city. And that is really the same principle that we are now trying to apply to other kinds of activations. Very much around how do we stand up now a very similar approach for temporary activations, whether it’s a pop-up inside an actual built environment like a retail space or it’s a pop-up arts installation, like Let’s Glow.
We were just talking about a—I love how you’re saying a street—
CRESCIMANO: Opening.
SOFIS: A street invitation. [Laughter.] We have piloted other things like first year free citywide [which waves certain fees for new small ground-floor commercial businesses]. We have Prop H, which has allowed us to expedite permitting for small businesses across the city. So I think we’re really going to be trying to take those learnings and apply them directly now into the economic core.
TRUONG: I want to touch on something with you. These sorts of activations really benefit from wide-ranging corporate and philanthropic support. But the activity we’re seeing from a lot of business leaders is not necessarily really staking a claim, it’s leaving the city and often with the proverbial middle finger on the way out. Can you speak from the corporate perspective on how you’re trying to get these people to really stake a claim and invest in what the future of the city can be, when they were, in a lot of cases, the
beneficiaries of this last boom?
ROSE: There’s a larger group of companies and company leaders who are staying and want to see San Francisco built up than are leaving. And this plan here is exactly what we’re looking for. We’re looking for a set of activities which will grow the streets so that it is attractive not only to residents on the west side or tourists, but also employees.
The companies we’ve been dealing with are very supportive and actively seeking just this type of activity, because it helps them convince employees to come back, because there’s something to come back to. You have to treat employees as visitors, and the environment they step into outside of their office’s environment is as important as the office environment. So to the extent that we can redesign San Francisco so it’s not such a monocrop of offices, but it’s offices plus homes, plus parks, plus bars, plus clubs, plus museums, that is an environment which makes it much more easy for businesses to decide to remain here or come here, because that’s what will help them attract and employ employees.
TRUONG: I want to touch on that, because a topic on the top of mind for a lot of the general public—and a couple of the questions that have already come up—is this idea of conversion. A lot of the focus has been on office-to-residential conversion, but I’m kind of curious, should we be broadening our definition of what a successful conversion is? You know, we look at all this empty office space and automatically think housing, but are there other sort of commercial uses that can be used in some of these empty spaces?
ROSE: Let me just quickly grab on that, because we’ve all talked about this. Yes. And a big deal will be art, such as what we’re doing here in Leidesdorff. To the extent that we can expand San Francisco’s art experience will make it hugely attractive to people to engage in. San Francisco used to have an arts district. It was very well known, especially for its expressionism back in the ’50s and ’60s and into the ’70s. And we need to reinvigorate that in the downtown area. In fact, identify a place where it could be an arts district. But in order to do that, you need affordable studio space, right?
New York is starting to do that. Companies are making space available for free or a nominal dollar a year for artists to come in and utilize it. Very similar to what Oakland did. [It’s been] very successful. So the building up of the art community in San Francisco is very important to that. Just what you’re talking about, Kevin, just a much more
“It is this moment in time that we actually have to refill our economic core with what we maybe thought was kind of missing.”
—KATE SOFIS
diversified reuse of the space.
CRESCIMANO: I would add to that that I think in the same way that Wade spoke about drawing an employee or a worker back downtown, like the benefit is that these things that we’re talking about—art and culture and pedestrian-friendly streets—draw people. We are talking about appealing to the human experience and that applies to whether it’s adding housing and converting to housing or diversifying or entertainment, which I think is another conversation.
Because we have, particularly north of Market in the district, it is predominantly office, which actually makes it conducive to different kinds of entertainment and other uses, because you don’t have potentially that kind of conflict with residential or neighborhoods. So I think there are a lot of questions, and from our side, we’re trying to plant those seeds to say who kind of grabs on to see the opportunity here.
SOFIS: I think the point you make, which is a really important one, that if entertainment as an example—and I personally do think that there’s great potential for more entertainment, more nighttime vibrancy, more music, but that runs right up against residential if you’re literally putting it in the same block. So in some ways, I see again with the broader core, the Financial District as a real opportunity to bring in some of these other uses that will do better because there isn’t the density of residential in the financial district proper.
I do want to sort of maybe provocatively say that we actually have built a lot of new residential immediately adjacent to the financial district in the South of Market Area, in Mission Bay. It’s very important to recognize that when we compare our downtown or our economic core to other major cities, whether we’re looking at L.A. or we’re looking at Manhattan, the scale is very different. We are a very compact place. So I would push back a bit on the notion that the highest and best use of many of our office buildings is conversion to residential. From what we are seeing and what we are having conversations [about] with building owners, I want to challenge that. There are many shades of gray of commercial use in the upper floors of these buildings. For some of the oldest buildings that are really going to prove themselves difficult to reimagine to the way that modern workers want to interact, we will and are actually looking at what I would call strategic conversions of some of those. But what we are also hearing is it’s not that people don’t want to come in to work
anymore. It’s the experience when they come in to work both on the ground, but actually in their work environment, needs to justify them coming in.
So that means more spaces for collaboration, more team space, less cubicles and individual offices and also smaller companies. What we’re seeing is larger companies shrinking their footprint. They’re not all leaving, but they’re right-sizing to the amount of space they need. So we are looking at opportunities to help buildings reimagine space on the upper floors, make smaller spaces. We are also starting to see pricing come down in our economic core, which is a good thing in the sense it allows us to recruit more diverse kinds of businesses from different sectors and expanding the kinds of sectors that we are hosting here in our downtown is an important part of the work that our office is also undertaking.
The last thing I will say, right before I came to the city a year and a half ago, I had come from running another nonprofit called S.F. Made—it supports manufacturing envisioning upper floors of buildings. They can have artists, they can have manufacturing Actually, I usually wear my Shinola watch,
which was built on the sixth floor of an office building, a former office building in Detroit. Educational uses; life science. Any of these things are possible actually on the upper floors of our office buildings, and our zoning is already very permissible in our downtown to allow any of these uses.
TRUONG: I’m going to go to an audience question. In my intro, I talked a little bit about the us-against-them mentality that can arise when you talk about downtown versus the neighborhoods. But somebody in the audience posed the question, Is that an old way of thinking? Is centralization kind of the way of the past, particularly as these work patterns have changed and folks are doing more economic activity where they live? Is there a decentralized model or should we be thinking about spreading out that economic activity across the city rather than thinking about the downtown core as what it was in the era past?
SILVER: I’ll jump in with that one and say yes, the narrative of downtown-versus-theneighborhood here in San Francisco needs to end. For us to be successful as one city moving forward together, we have to think of our downtown as your neighborhood too. Imagine your downtown neighborhood becoming your destination for arts and culture, your destination for nightlife and entertainment, your destination for dining.
We can do this together, in changing that narrative and perception. Concurrently with our “Public Realm Action Plan,” we’ve also, as an organization, rebranded. We used to be called the Downtown Community Benefit District. Now we’re called the Downtown Partnership, to really reflect the work that we do and how we do it together. But once Let’s Glow is over, you’ll start to see new signage in the public realm that actually drops financial district and FiDi from our naming conventions and just focuses on downtown and again telling that layered history. Moving away from being called the Financial District and FiDi—automatically you think 9-to-5, banks financial institutions, people on suits— but that’s not downtown San Francisco, and that’s not what I think your downtown San Francisco should be.
ROSE: Yeah, I’d like to say that the idea of downtown being somehow not San Francisco is ridiculous. It’s the business district. Downtown has always been the heart of San Francisco. What happened recently is this tremendous boom of the digital economy kind of muffled that perspective or buffered it somehow. Now we have an opportunity to reengage.
“What we are interested in is essentially the quality of life in San Francisco, because it has so much to do about the ability of businesses and for the economy to prosper here in the city.”
—WADE ROSE
WHY DOES A LIE TRAVEL AROUND THE WORLD WHILE THE TRUTH IS still lacing up its boots? In all areas, not just politics, science, and medicine, outrageous or fascinating false information outpaces truth. Dr. Joe Pierre discusses the psychological reasons that conspiracy theories and other false narratives have been successful. Excerpted from the September 1, 2022, Personal Growth Member-led Forum program “Why Have False Beliefs and Conspiracy Theories Become so Powerful?”
JOE PIERRE , M.D., Health Sciences Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA. Author; Expert Witness; Legal Consultant
ERIC SIEGAL: As the famous satirist Jonathan Swift said in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted . . .”
The danger, of course, is that false narratives and their cousins conspiracy theories can damage the shared fact base on which democracy depends, whether through distorted context, misleading editing, oversimplification, incorrect ex trapolation from a few examples or just outright lying. The result is the same; there can be a loss of trust in institutions, tribalism, and a search for an authoritar ian leader in confusing times; increased
stress levels and anger in society resulting [in] violence.
It’s therefore important that we look at the causes of false narratives and some possible actions we can take to decrease
their power. Dr. Joe Pierre is with us this evening to start us off with a solid grounding in the underlying psycholog ical and technical factors that are enticing people down the path of false narratives.
JOE PIERRE: I actually am in the pro cess of moving from Los Angeles and UCLA up here. So I’m a new resident of the Bay Area, and I’ll be taking a position at UCSF in the coming weeks. I’d never heard of The Commonwealth Club, but when I got here and mentioned I was giv ing this talk to some friends and family, they were like, “Whoa, The Common wealth Club.” So I’m very honored to be here at such a prestigious institution.
Anyway, I’m a psychiatrist. I do mainly clinical work, and throughout my career, I’ve focused on the treatment of individ uals with schizophrenia and other major
mental illnesses. At the same time, one of my main interests has been the gray area between clear psychopathology and normal human behavior and functioning. So I’ve had a longstanding interest in what we call delusion-like beliefs, beliefs that aren’t actu ally delusional but bear some similarities to delusions.
Conspiracy theories has ended up be ing a very hot topic in recent years, hasn’t it? So let me just set that stage and take us through a brief history of recent conspira cy theory development.
For most of my lifetime, and I think probably for most of you in the audience, conspiracy theories and so-called conspir acy theorists have really been regarded as a kind of fringe phenomenon, complete with the stereotype of a basement-dwelling, tinfoil-hat-wearing individual. But it does seem like that has changed in the past de cade, maybe even in just 5 years.
I’ve been looking at conspiracy theories for about the past decade, kind of just as a side interest. Then, lo and behold, in 2016, a churchgoing father of two became con vinced that there was a child pornography ring in the basement of a D.C. pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong. He was convinced that there were children there in acute dan ger, and he decided to travel across state lines some 300 miles armed with a loaded AR 15-style rifle. Against the advice of his girlfriend, I might add. His mission was to “self-investigate” the situation.
He got into the pizzeria. He fired some shots through a door that supposedly led to the basement where children were being trafficked. And he quickly discovered that the pizzeria had neither a child pornogra phy ring nor a basement, for that matter.
Police arrived on scene and he quickly and peacefully surrendered to police, con ceding that the intel on this wasn’t 100 per cent. Edgar Welsh ended up taking a plea deal, pleading guilty to assault and a weap ons charge. He was sentenced to four years in prison. He was actually recently released and by all accounts has been living a quiet life out of the public eye.
Now, while it might be tempting to write Welsh off as some kind of kook, the socalled Pizzagate conspiracy theory was not his brainchild. It was something that had
gone viral on the Internet that year and had been promoted by the likes of Alex Jones on his program “Infowars.”
In 2018, Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star Kyrie Irving helped to bring flat Earth conspiracy theories into the mainstream. That same year, YouGov performed a sur vey that found about 4 percent of the U.S. population believes that the Earth is flat, and as many as 16 percent lacked confi dence that the Earth is round.
That same year, a documentary film came out called “Behind the Curve.” I was invited to be an expert authority on con spiracy beliefs in that film. So that garnered me my 3 minutes of fame. That film sur prisingly turned out to be something of a sleeper hit on Netflix. I had all kinds of friends and family calling me up, saying, “I saw you” on this movie that I figured no one was going to see.
Now, let’s talk about flat-Earthers for a second. Let’s keep in mind that flat Earth beliefs are not merely about the shape of the Earth. That by itself is not a conspiracy theory. But in order to believe that the Earth is flat, you would also have to believe that NASA is the most sophisticated movie stu dio on the planet, having faked the moon landing, and is in cahoots not only with the entirety of the U.S. government, but also with every single government around the world that has a space program or has launched satellites into orbit. So it’s not just about the shape of the Earth.
At the beginning of 2020, of course, conspiracy theories really took off and the World Health Organization warned us at the beginning of the pandemic that there would be an infodemic—that is, this pan demic of misinformation about COVID 19. Now, it’s well known that conspiracy theo ries flourish during times of societal crisis. So it’s no surprise that we’ve seen conspiracy theories bloom in recent years. But I don’t think anyone could have predicted just how much they’ve bloomed.
And now that we’re several years into the pandemic, we’ve all really witnessed how conspiracy theories have emerged, prolifer ated and coalesced.
At the beginning of the pandemic, we heard about this theory that the SARSCoV-2 virus might have originated in the
Wuhan virology lab. That by itself, again, would not be a conspiracy theory.
But we quickly heard also claims that it had been deliberately synthesized as a bio weapon, deliberately released, and there was a big cover up by China and the World Health Organization.
Other COVID-related conspiracy the ories have been more outlandish. In the spring of 2020, we saw existing or preex isting conspiracy theories about 5G—5G networks merged with conspiracy theories about COVID-19. So there were claims that the pandemic wasn’t caused by a virus at all or an infectious disease, but was caused by electromagnetic fields emanating from cell phone towers. And of course, COVID-19 conspiracy theories have coalesced with ex isting conspiracy theories about vaccines.
I think everyone in this room has prob ably heard that perhaps COVID-19 was a plot orchestrated by the likes of Bill Gates, perhaps in cahoots with Anthony Fauci, in order to implant microchips into people for the purposes of tracking them, or some part of some globalist plot that involved mass sterilization and population control.
Now everybody’s chuckling. But a poll from July 2021 demonstrated that belief in those conspiracy theories was not uncom mon. In 2021, “the threat of coronavirus was exaggerated for political reasons”— about 40 percent of the U.S. population thought that was definitely or probably true; 12 [percent] weren’t sure.
Vaccines were shown to cause autism—18 percent sure; 25 [percent] not sure.
And there’s the one about the microchip; 20 percent of the population believes that the COVID-19 vaccine was being used to microchip the population; an additional 14 percent were unsure.
Meanwhile, as the pandemic went on, Pizzagate morphed into QAnon, which I might describe as a populist political move ment that not only includes the belief that there are satanic-worshiping pedophiles that are part of this deep state, but also that those same pedophiles are harvesting adre nochrome from children. Hillary Clinton’s drinking the adrenochrome to make herself young and virile. There are lizard people who are operating a shadow government across the planet. There’s this thing called the
storm. The storm is coming, right? There’s going to be martial law. Hillary Clinton, all the other liberals are going to be strung up after military tribunals and executed. Of course, the election that came to pass was rigged. And probably everyone has actually heard that there are people who have these big rallies heralding the second coming of JFK Jr., because they think he never died.
Again, this might sound crazy to you. It might not. But a 2021 poll found that about 15 to 20 percent of the American population did indeed endorse some degree of belief in some of the core tenets of QAnon, such as the business about the Satan-worshiping pe dophiles. So as a result, mainstream media has declared that we’re living in a golden age of conspiracy theories. The political left has gone so far as to claim that America is suf fering from mass delusion or mass psycho sis. Those on the right have claimed we’re victims of something called mass formation psychosis.
Now, there’s a very well-known researcher named Joseph Uscinski at the University of Miami. He was recently written up in this Rolling Stone article. They described him as arguably the foremost expert on conspiracy
theories and the guy every expert you talk to says you need to talk to. He takes issue with this idea that there’s a golden age of conspiracy theories. He reminds us that the mainstream press has been declaring it the year of the conspiracy theory for decades, if not centuries.
So he performed an analysis of letters to the editor written to The New York Times, going back to the 1800s, to see if he could prove that conspiracy theory beliefs were actually more common today than they were, say, a century ago or 50 years ago. What he found was, no, that’s not the case. Conspiracy theories have always been pop ular. There have always been narratives that emerge from time to time, albeit with vari ous ebbs and flows.
Likewise, research from RAND has looked at this phenomenon called truth de cay. This idea that we’re dealing with now, the idea that we’re in the sort of post-truth era where people don’t really agree on facts and this sort of thing also is something that’s ebbed and flowed with time.
So you could argue that it’s not actually true that conspiracy theories are much more prevalent than they were in other times in
the century. That said, I would argue that while they might not necessarily be more prevalent, they are more consequential, or . . . more powerful than they have been in any other point in certainly my lifetime, and particularly because the belief in the con spiracy theory is often tied to action.
By way of example, of course, we talk ed about microchipping and the vaccines. Clearly, it’s been demonstrated that belief in conspiracy theories about COVID-19 were tied to the slowness of people’s willingness to be vaccinated. Back in November of last year, when 20 percent of the U.S. population believed the thing about the microchips, only 60 percent of the population had been vaccinated, with about 30 percent of Repub licans saying that they would not get vacci nated.
As we saw in the case of the Edgar Welsh conspiracy theory, beliefs are sometimes— rarely but sometimes—connected to violent behavior. In the spring of 2020, some 80 cell phone towers in the U.K. were set on fire due to the belief that the 5G cell phone tow ers were causing COVID-19.
Conspiracy theories that are focused on racial lines also have a long history of breed ing discrimination against racial groups and inciting racial violence.
Here in San Francisco, hate crimes perpe trated against Asian-Americans—while the president was talking about “kung flu” and the “Wuhan virus,” that sort of thing, hate crimes increased over 500 percent.
So while we might not be living in a golden age of conspiracy theories based on prevalence, I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to claim that we might be living in a dark age of conspiracy theory belief based on the consequences and the potential harms of conspiracy theories today.
In case you’re wondering, this is not just something that’s happening here in the United States. This is a worldwide phenom enon.
Having set that stage, I’m going to get into trying to give an explanation of what I think is going on from a psychological standpoint. Let’s start with a definition of just exact ly what a conspiracy theory is. This is my favorite definition of conspiracy theories,
“Twenty percent of the population believes that the COVID-19 vaccine was being used to microchip the population; an additional 14 percent were unsure.”
stolen off Twitter, by a guy named Byrne Hobart; he says conspiracy theories are a genre of science fiction in which most or ganizations are secretly run by competent people pursuing definite goals. I love that definition—tongue in cheek, obviously— because it really highlights how improbable conspiracy theories are to those of us who aren’t particularly drawn to them.
Now, when I find conspiracy theories, I like to say a conspiracy theory rejects the authoritative account of reality in favor of some plot involving a group of people with malevolent intent that’s deliberately kept se cret from the public. We’ve all lived among conspiracy theory beliefs. We’ve all heard of them. Many of them relate to historical events, and many of them, particularly these days, relate to scientific topics, technology, that sort of thing.
As a psychiatrist, let me address this thing about delusions or mass delusion. Con spiracy theories aren’t delusions. Believing in conspiracy theories is not a symptom of mental illness. There’s no such thing as mass formation psychosis, at least in psychiatry and in a medical sense. And there are, in fact, some clear differences between con spiracy theory beliefs and delusions.
So delusions that we encounter in people with mental illness are beliefs that are held with extraordinarily, if not unassailable, high conviction. They won’t give up that be lief no matter what. The belief by definition is false. The belief is idiosyncratic. Meaning it’s generally not shared with other people. It’s often based on subjective experience, like I had a dream or I had a vision—that sort of thing. And it’s often self-referential. That is, the belief is about the believer.
Conspiracy theories, likewise, are of ten—not always, but often—held with high conviction. They’re probably false, but by definition they’re not necessarily false; sometimes conspiracy theories do end up being true. But generally we’re talking about shared beliefs; these are not beliefs held by a single individual.
They’re also based not on subjective ex perience, but information that’s out there in the world. And they’re typically not self-ref erential beliefs; they’re beliefs about the world and things that are happening in the world or other people rather than the be
lievers themselves.
Now, the other reason why it’s import ant to distinguish between delusions and conspiracy theory beliefs is that conspiracy theory beliefs are very common. Surveys have consistently shown about 50 percent of Americans believe in at least one conspira cy theory. That’s been replicated in studies here in the U.S. over time as well as in other countries.
In fact, a 2019 poll found that about 64 percent of Americans believed in at least one conspiracy theory with anywhere from 52 to 85 percent of [Europeans] believing in at least one conspiracy theory.
So this is normal to believe in a conspir acy theory. This is not mental illness, or if it is, we have to revise what we mean when we talk about mental illness.
Now, what is it about conspiracy theories that are enticing and appealing to people?
One thing is simply that they’re entertain ing. Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, wrote, “Everyone loves a conspiracy theory; they provide narratives that are sim ply more interesting and exciting than the boring old truth.”
So that’s part of it.
Now, psychologists have been doing re search over the past decade or so, really try ing to identify what makes certain people more likely to believe conspiracy theories than others. Mostly what they’re doing is these associational studies where they look at people who rate more highly on scales that measure conspiracy theory belief, and then they look at other what I call psycho logical quirks or cognitive biases that are associated with that propensity to believe in conspiracy theories.
Some of those things that emerged from that kind of research include the need for what I call the three C’s: certainty, control and closure.
That helps explain why conspiracy the ories tend to pop up during times of crisis. There’s a lot of uncertainty, there’s fear. And so conspiracy theories provide a kind of tidy narrative, right?
The death of JFK; it wasn’t just a lone gun man; presidents aren’t just in danger of be ing shot any day; this was a deliberate plot, etc., etc.
In theory, that might make you feel more comfortable. Although research has shown very clearly, unsurprisingly, that people who
“A 2019 poll found that about 64 percent of Americans believed in at least one conspiracy theory.”
believe in conspiracy theories don’t feel safer because of the conspiracy theory.
Need for uniqueness is another one. That’s the idea that you might believe this because you feel you’re privy to some special truth and the rest of us people have the wool pulled over our eyes.
There are certain cognitive biases, like, for example, hypersensitivity. Hypersensi tive agency detection refers to the belief that everything happens for a reason or due to some higher purpose or power rather than random events happening.
There is some overlap with some mental health issues like paranoia or a construct called schizotypy, and recent works also focused on—this is a real-life academic thing—something called bulls--t receptiv ity, which is basically the propensity to be attracted to or duped by seemingly mean ingful statements that are, in fact, vacuous. Deepak Chopra is often cited as a prom inent producer of that kind of bulls--t. No offense to any Deepak Chopra fans.
And then the opposite of that is a decrease in analytical thinking.
But I don’t want to spend too much time talking about that research.
Instead I’m going to talk about my own crazy theory. So I think that in order to understand why conspiracy beliefs are so common, at 60 percent or 50 percent of the population, we need a more normalizing model.
The model that I have written about in my academic work very just involves two main components: mistrust and misinfor mation.
When I talk about mistrust, I’m specifical ly talking about something called epistemic mistrust. This is mistrust of knowledge or information—and specifically authoritative accounts or conventional wisdom. Studies have shown repeatedly that epistemic mis trust is associated with a greater propensity to believe in conspiracy theories.
Let me go back and make an important point to when I showed you the different psychological quirks that are associated with conspiracy theory belief. It’s not as if people who have conspiracy theory beliefs have these things and the rest of the people who
don’t, don’t. These are quantitative, not qual itative differences. So people who have be lief in conspiracy theories might have some of these more than people who don’t. But we all have needs for uniqueness and needs for control and closure and that sort of thing. So, likewise, we all have certain degrees of epistemic mistrust. A certain amount of mistrust is healthy. But on the other side of that sort of continuum, there might be less justifiable or less healthy mistrust.
In any case, we live in an era of decreas ing trust. [There] is a Gallup poll going back to the 1970s looking at trust in mass media. We’re pretty close to an all-time low in trust ing one of the main informational sources we have for news and facts in this country. Less than 50 percent have good faith that the news is fair and accurate.
And probably no surprise, public trust in government has really kind of tanked. It was in the 1960s up there in the 70 or 80 percent. Now, in the past decade or so, we’re hover ing like in that 20 percent in terms of “Do you trust the folks in government in Wash ington always or most of the time?”
And of course, we’re living in a time of significant political polarization that in cludes not only mistrust, but a real sense of antipathy that political scientists describe as affective polarization.
Now, there are a number of pathways to this kind of epistemic mistrust.
One, as I suggested before, is more pathological. [Someone] could be just sort of suspicious or paranoid and mistrustful because of that. But epistemic vigilance is also a healthy impulse—that we should be skeptical and not just believe everything. So this is a little bit on the spectrum of more abnormal. Another very frequent cause of mistrust has to do with tribalism, racism, xenophobic attitudes and politics.
But I do want to remind everyone that mistrust is sometimes earned. So people mistrust because of trust violations. Institu tions of authority sometimes don’t hold up their end of the bargain. And therefore, trust is lost because of that sort of classic example.
[There are] conspiracy theory beliefs re lated to HIV, that the HIV virus was syn thesized by the CIA and deliberately put into low-income populations; those kinds of beliefs are overrepresented in the African
American community. Then that has been linked to things like the Tuskegee experi ment, where in the name of science, bona fide treatments for syphilis were withheld from African-Americans, and [there’s] a whole history of that going back since the start of the country. So I want to highlight that mistrust doesn’t imply pathology.
Now when we start talking about scientif ic conspiracy theories or science belief be yond conflicts of interest and real-life trust violation, I think there are a couple other factors that are worth mentioning.
One is a kind of misunderstanding or a lack of appreciation that science is an itera tive process of research. We look again and again and things. We all get frustrated, like, “Well, I thought we were supposed to take an aspirin once a day, and now they’re say ing don’t.” Or, you know, HRT [hormone replacement therapy] for postmenopausal women—like that was recommended then and now it’s not. “These people don’t know what they’re talking about.”
But that’s what science is. We look at that. We collect the data. We establish what sup ports or doesn’t support a theory, and that may be revised later down the line. Some times that’s lost in translation with the pub lic, as “these sort of wishy-washy scientists don’t know what they’re talking about” kind of thing. Likewise, there are some items of legitimate scientific debate, and without sort of infantilizing things, it’s a little bit like hear ing your parents argue as a child. If there’s disagreement, you just experience it as cha os rather than being able to understand that sometimes we disagree about things. That’s part of what science is.
I think also in terms of the public percep tion of scientists, there is a long-standing idea that scientists are elitists who live in these ivory towers. So in the midst of pop ulism as a political movement—populism is this idea that the people are the core of the movement, and experts and elites are sort of the root of all evil—scientists have been swept up into that as the experts.
Let’s go on to misinformation, the second component of my theory. Basically my idea here is once you lose trust in informational sources, we then become vulnerable to mis
information that’s out there, thereby falling down the so-called rabbit hole.
[In] a paper, I [wrote], “Although some conspiracy theorists may be genuinely the orizing, most are crafting a narrative based on the synthesis of available information and might be more appropriately described as conspiracy theists.”
This next quotation’s from a psychologist at the University of Michigan named Col leen Seifert. She says “The problem of mis information ‘in the head,’ where individuals struggle to maintain inconsistent facts and memory, has been replaced by a problem of misinformation ‘in the world,’ where incon sistent information exists across individuals, cultures and societies.”
So if we want to understand conspira cy theories in a digital age, we have to un derstand how we form beliefs based on information that we oftentimes encounter online. That starts with something I think is now a household word: confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to gravitate toward information that supports what we already believe, and we steer away or swipe past information that refutes what we believe.
Now, in online ad environments—and this is sort of the tech world, so many of you, I’m sure, are familiar with these concepts— there’s echo chambers. There’s this thing called filter bubbles that kind of steer us to the information the evil Internet thinks it wants us to see. And the result is confirma tion bias on steroids.
Why is online misinformation so ubiqui tous and where is it coming from? Make no mistake, peddling misinformation and con spiracy theories is a for-profit industry. So there’s not only misinformation, but deliber ate disinformation. The difference between now and 20 years ago is that misinformation used to be sort of relegated to the grocery store checkout line. We recognize the Star and the Enquirer and that sort of thing. But now in the media landscape that we live in, reliable facts exist right alongside opinion and not-so-reliable information, so that it’s not really that easy to tell the difference.
And few of us have really ever been trained, like how do you sort out what’s real of not on the Internet? I’ve had people tell me, “No, I know it’s true, because I saw Alex
Jones say it on Infowars,” as if that’s like a news station.
We talk these days about the free market of opinion. I like to call it the flea market of opinion. Within the flea market of opinion, that is today’s media landscape. If you want to reach a larger audience and if you want to get more clicks—we operate on this sort of click-based economy online—then it be hooves you to either disseminate or piggy back on top of material that’s outrageous, salacious or false.
Echoing the Jonathan Swift quote, re searchers have shown in recent years that an online environment, social media places like Twitter, fake news travels faster and fast er than reliable information. It is therefore a sort of vehicle of commerce.
When I say conspiracy theories are prof itable, I don’t just mean financially, I mean politically. So we’ve seen conspiracy theories promoted in the mainstream news on both sides of the political fence.
And, of course, we’ve also seen political leaders using conspiracy theories to their own ends. Now recalling, of course, that Donald Trump was largely responsible for the birther movement in 2014, several years before he took office; the birther movement, of course, was the claim that President Obama wasn’t born in this country, didn’t have a birth certificate, etc. You may also remember that during the 2016 campaign, he claimed that Ted Cruz’s father was an as sociate of Lee Harvey Oswald. And then, of course, during his presidency, he promoted the lab leak hypothesis about COVID-19, actually saying that he had evidence to sup port that that was true. And, of course, he’s also promoted the idea that the 2020 elec tion was stolen.
Meanwhile, China had countered with its own conspiracy theory that COVID 19 ac tually came from the U.S.; it was taken there in 2019 during the U.S. military games; and Russia had hopped on that bandwagon, also claiming that coronavirus is all the Amer icans’ fault. And we couldn’t have any dis cussion of a belief in misinformation if we didn’t mention that Russia’s disinformation machine has been many years in the making and includes not only state-controlled me dia, but an army of Internet trolls and bots that proliferate information, seemingly with
the intent of fomenting discord and breed ing discontent with democracy in places like the U.S. and Europe.
I never like to just say, “Well, here’s the prob lem; I have no idea how to fix it.” So based on my framework, I want to make some comments about that. First of all, I’ll talk briefly about what I call a prescription for a post-truth world. I sort of summarize this irreverently as the holy trinity of truth de tection.
These are all things that we can do as indi viduals. The first is maintain what we call in psychology research intellectual humility— basically just means acknowledging I might be wrong or I don’t know. It just seems like we’re not living in a society where it’s en couraged to ever admit that.
Cognitive flexibility—this is the idea that I can change my mind. This goes back to the idea of science; here’s the data, but maybe I’ll modify my belief if you give me new infor mation.
My freshman roommate in college went on to win the Nobel Prize. He is a physicist who discovered that the acceleration of the universe is increasing as time goes on. In an interview, he talked about how when he first collected data from the Hubble telescope, it contradicted everything they believed in physics. So he immediately said, “Gosh, I’m probably wrong. And let me look again and again.” And finally he said, “The data look solid. Now we have to modify our beliefs.”
That’s not how human beings think, right? That’s how scientists think. We have to train people how to think like that.
And finally, analytical thinking—which sounds technical, like it’s really smart and brainy or something. It doesn’t mean that at all. Analytical thinking just means slow ing down thinking. This thing I just saw on the internet. Is it true? Maybe it’s not true. Maybe before I share it with someone else or send it or claim that it’s true, I should look what the source of information is. What’s the evidence to support that belief?
And the opposite of that is intuitive think ing. The idea—I believe this because it feels right. Stephen Colbert talked about truthi ness. The idea [that] it’s true because it feels true to me. That’s really the more intuitive,
more natural way that we think as human beings.
Having said that, having spent a little time talking about individuals, I think if we real ly want to understand conspiracy theories, we shouldn’t understand them as individual psychopathology. We have to understand them as a product of a sick society.
I’ve never been fond of this quotation by Artie Lange, very, very countercultural, well-known psychiatrist from back in the day. But I think if we modify it a little bit, it’s a pretty good way of summarizing conspir acy theories: A perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.
Let me just say a little bit about what we can do, not as individuals, but as a society and the direction I think we might want to go. So going back to my idea of the conspir acy theory beliefs and belief in all misinfor mation, not just conspiracy theories, going back to my model that that’s rooted in mis trust, then before we start correcting people and saying, “No, you’re wrong, and here’s what the evidence in this” blah blah, we have to address the trust problem. We have
to acknowledge that trust has been lost. We have to think about how to get it back. And we have to do that collaboratively.
What we can’t do is make this mistake of putting the cart before the horse. Trustwor thiness must come before trust to earn trust from people. So if we’re talking about insti tutions of authority, whether it’s the CDC or what have you, the way you cultivate trust is being honest, being transparent and col laborating with the public, engaging them, letting them in the door, so to speak, giving them a seat at the table , so to speak.
That’s cultivating trust.
Secondly, there is, I think, a role for ed ucation. It’s certainly not as simple as just “Here’s the facts” and people are going to gravitate to that. But we can as a society, work on trying to promote science literacy,
example.
We can try to teach people how to be come better consumers of information, whether they’re encountering that online or in other places. There’s a great little 15-min ute piece put out by NPR back in 2019, and my child is only four years old, but I feel like
pretty soon I’m going to make him listen to this. This is like the kind of thing we should be having our children listen to on day one, that there’s misinformation out there and here are some tips to navigate toward infor mation that’s reliable. I certainly didn’t get that kind of teaching in school. I don’t know if children are taught that today or not. But we should be starting this in elementary school, geared down to younger people, of course.
Now, the most evidence-based antidote to belief in conspiracy theories and real ly misinformation in general are what we call inoculation or pre-bunking, instead of debunking strategies—that is, beating mis information to the punch. So if I’m a phy sician and I’m worried about vaccination, I might say “You might have heard this thing about microchipping. That’s not true. Here’s the evidence that we know that’s not true.” In fact, I just listened to a program where a scientist did a study to try to see if he could detect microchips just to prove that there weren’t any in there. I mean, there’s evidence that there’s no microchip.
Having said that, we’re pretty bad as a society at beating misinformation to the punch. We are losing that war, and misin formation is almost always there before us. But that’s a direction we can go.
And finally, reducing misinformation. How do we hold media accountable? How do we think about liability? Certainly in recent years, we’ve seen some of the major tech companies here in Silicon Valley take efforts to deprioritize if not even remove conspiracy theory information or harmful misinformation. We’ve seen that with You Tube. We’ve seen that in Twitter. We’ve seen it with Facebook. Now, the effects of that kind of mitigation are not clear.
Does it just mean that people will shift and leave Facebook and go to Truth Social or whatever that other thing was? It just emboldens conspiracy theory believers to say—you hear that all the time—“Well, it was removed, so I know it’s true.” That’s what’s known as the backfire effect. And will it just worsen political polarization and hamper discourse?
We don’t know.
This is something I think we’ll, of course, grapple with in years to come.
for
“This thing I saw on the internet; is it true? Maybe it’s not true. Maybe before I share it with someone else or send it or claim that it’s true, I should look at what the source of information is.”
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