YouSaid · the spoken record

Nicholas Kristof

lines on the record: 38
first: 2020-02-17
most recent: 2020-02-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And you do see that people are reaching for some big ideas and new approaches in Oregon, we were always raised on pioneer mythology of are these heroic ancestors who crossed the country and they would never relied on a benefit plan. Well, of course, the whole reason that the pioneers went to the Willamette Valley was because of a benefit plan, a government benefit plan. It was the homesteads. At the end, my area was transformed by these big ideas of homesteads, rural electrification, the GI Bill of Rights. And that is what I think can indeed, again, transform the opportunities for the kids on the number six bus.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And ultimately, Kansas voters rebelled, and because their schools were doing too poorly, and when Kansas voters rebel and want to raise taxes, that strikes me as a really interesting moment. Likewise, you have red states like Idaho, like Utah that are expanding Medicaid. So I wonder if there isn't something of a mental switch. You begin to see as a lot of whites suffer from drug addiction, a change in the frame of reference.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I am. I mean, for a couple of reasons. One is that I think the U.S. really took some fundamental missteps over the last 50 years and that involved cutting taxes and cutting investments in human capital and safety nets. As I look at that trajectory, I wonder if Kansas under Sam Brownback marked kind of the”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've seen programs that work, and we write about in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an incredibly successful program that deals with women who had addictions for 15 years on average or facing prison. Instead, they go into a program that provides counseling, provides treatment, and gives them jobs. We've also seen that we can address some social problems when we put our mind to it. The Obama administration in 2010 addressed veteran homelessness, and this was, I mean, the country was embarrassed that there were so many veterans on the street, and we put our minds to it. It became a priority. And over six years, veteran homelessness was reduced by half. If we were similarly embarrassed by child homelessness, then we could reduce child homelessness by half as well.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So much more successful. Yet we still deal with drugs basically with a law enforcement toolbox when it is cheaper and infinitely more humane and successful to deal with a public health, with a treatment toolbox.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One is that we know what works, partly because these issues are ones that Germany dealt with, Canada dealt with, life expectancy is not falling in those countries. Portugal decriminalized drug possession, including heroin cocaine, and mounted a public health effort.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“President Trump, and then what does he do? He rose access to health care. In Tightrobe, we talked to my old friend Mary Mayer, who. This dear old friend of mine, wonderful woman. She was homeless for seven years. At one point, she put a gun in her mouth to end it all. And I asked her whether she ever thought that there was a political solution, or at least a political answer to some of these difficulties in our community. And she said, traditionally she hadn't. She hadn't traditionally been interested in politics. And finally, in 2016, she thought, got engaged and voted for the first time and voted for President Trump.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that when Democrats have these conversations, I think they tend to be too glib about how the problems are all the Republicans. And these are bipartisan. We have 50 years of failures, bipartisan failures. Democrats have fingerprints on them as well. But having said that, I think it's still true that when So people in counties that had higher rates of deaths of despair were substantially more likely to vote for Trump. And that correlated. And yet what would reduce deaths of despair? Well, one thing is access to medical care. And the one thing that President Trump did particularly aggressively was try to erode people's access to health care. I mean, you really do get this sense of a lot of people desperately desperate for better outcomes and then as a result voting for President”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bobby Kennedy made these heroic efforts in the 60s to knit together the black working class and the white working class and create this common front. And for a while it might have worked. And then really with Nixon's Southern strategy, there was this very successful effort to woo the white working class, partly, I think, by playing on fears of competition from African Americans. Today there is this tension having said that I mean, the white working class, like the black working class, tends to be socially conservative on issues like abortion. In the case of white working class guns, but on economic issues, they actually tend to be fairly liberal.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“David, I think there's a misperception in the U.S. among affluent Americans that these are tragic, but this is the inevitable consequences of automation, globalization. And it's not. It was the consequence of bad policy over 50 years in the US, and bad policy driven by a bad narrative that this is all about personal responsibility. And that produced a much harsher line of policies. That meant that the U.S., in contrast to other OECD countries, invested less in human capital and less in social safety nets. And ultimately, that, I think, is what led to those deaths of despair and is partly why the NAPs are no longer with us.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Having children at a wedlock, this kind of thing. And meanwhile, the great Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson was saying, no, it's about jobs. He was exactly right because when jobs left places like Yam Hill or Maine or Appalachia, wherever it was, the same pathologies unfolded. And it was both that in places like Yam Hill, it was partly that the traditional good union jobs left and that when people could get work, it paid much, much less than before. And so for the bottom half of the distribution, there has been this plunge in ability to live a good life.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, in Yam Hill, which is largely lily white, and I think probably in a lot of white communities, people in the 1990s looked at struggles in the black community around the U.S. and said, Rather patronizingly that this is because of black culture and it's deadbeat dads and people making bad decisions about drugs.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All told a quarter of the kids on my number six bus died from drugs, alcohol, suicide, related pathologies, and Farlan died of liver failure connected to drug and alcohol use. Zealand died in a house fire when he was passed out drunk. Regina died of hepatitis from needle use. Nathan blew himself up cooking meth. And the only survivor was Keelan, who survived because he was spending 13 years in the Oregon State Penitentiary. And just one after the other, and they weren't, I mean, they were obviously outliers in some sense, but there was another family on the bus, also with five children, and then that family as well, four of the five are now gone. It was staggering.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Napsliv just down the road for me, they got on the school bus right after I did. Farlan was my grade, then Zealand, Regina, Nathan Keelan, a little bit younger, Mr. Knapp had a union job laying sewer pipes. Mrs. Knapp was a tractor driver on a hazelnut farm. They'd bought their own place. The kids were full of life, very brilliant kids. And when Farlan turned 16, we were all jealous because his family had saved up and got him a Ford Mustang for his birthday. We were so jealous of Farlan. And then...”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Spent time with the warlord who was as brutal as anybody could be and covered his predations. But then the person who had the deepest impression on me from that trip was this little Polish nun who was working in Congo and all the other aid groups had fled and she stayed behind and she was single-handedly running an emergency feeding center and an orphanage and negotiated to keep the warlord out of her town and she was just so strong and courageous that I returned to Congo actually feeling better about human nature, about the human capacity to do the right thing when challenged.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I certainly have been deeply shaken by Darfur, for example, or some of the things in South Sudan, for example. But I think that one thing that has fortified me and reassured me that maybe doesn't come through enough is that side by side with the worst of humanity, you invariably come across the best of humanity. And so In Congo, one time, the most lethal conflict since World War II”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I thought it would be best to tell in person after I got back, but I had to tell the foreign desk why all of a sudden I wasn't where I was supposed to be. And shortly afterward, Gerald spoke to somebody in the foreign desk who said, I was terrible at it in an explain crash. I was completely blown. And I learned truth is indeed...”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where I think a columnist and maybe any journalist really has influence is not so much changing minds on issues that are on the agenda, but actually helping change what is on the agenda. We have spotlights. And if we can use that spotlight to project it on something and hence elevate it to the agenda, then that is a step toward getting it addressed. And so it was interesting about my reporting on Darfur or sex trafficking was not in my opinions on it. I mean, they were pretty banal, but it was making people spill their coffee as they read about What was happening in Darfur, in a brothel, whatever it may”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not at all. Not at all. But just how important it is to get in the field and get outside the capital and talk to people. And I think that In addition, one of the things I learned after I became a columnist was”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think part of it was that we had spent many, many years as reporters before I became a columnist. And when I was a reporter, and especially a foreign correspondent, I learned to have a deep suspicion of columnists. Pontificate from inside the bubble. And I saw how”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you can raise kids together and the marriage survivor, a book is a piece of cake. It really is. You can put a book manuscript down to bed at night and it stays asleep.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As suspected sources for giving materials. And we had Chinese friends who were giving us classified materials in that sense they were breaking the law. Nobody had gotten into trouble. But I remember we just, we couldn't sleep that night and we thought, you know, at some point this will happen to us. We will get our dear friends in trouble and destroy their lives. And we decided we want to leave. This is when we've got to go.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they weren't trying to learn running techniques. That's probably the point when they began to regret giving Cheryl a visa because it was a lot easier for Cheryl to lose her tails than it was for me. But the night, I remember we were just deciding whether to leave the Washington Post reporter, the state security arrested two of her best friends and... Chinese friends, a couple, and ended up sending them to prison for something like 10 years and seven years.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was some discussion about kicking us out, and then they put us on incredibly intense surveillance. So every time we went out, I would go out jogging and I'd have several cars and motorcycles tailing me.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wrote in particular one article about Prime Minister Li Peng and mentioned that his mom had a very dim view of him. And he was furious. It didn't take that well, huh? He did not take that well. And so there were...”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Surprisingly, the propaganda worked pretty well in the countryside and that there was this peasantry, there was this deep desire for order and stability. And a certain amount of suspicion of rich educated people in the cities who were clamoring for things they didn't really understand. In the countryside, which supplied the troops for the People's Liberation Army, there was still fairly strong support for the government.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of kids who'd been killed or injured and then drive them to the hospitals on the back of these open rickshaws. And these were guys from the countryside. These were peasants. They certainly couldn't have given you some grand formula for democracy. But there they were in some cases dying for these principles. taught me just a deep lesson that When you are, when people are risking their lives for something, they are ready for it.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My single most powerful memory when I was out on Tiananmen Square and the troops were opening fire had to do with the fact that there'd been a lot of debate among American observers about whether the Chinese people were, quote unquote, ready for democracy. And the idea was that people who are poorer, who are less educated, may not be really ready to sustain democracy and there was commentary that they may have had protests clamoring for democracy, but they didn't really know what they meant by democracy. And then that night, watching people die for democracy and watching, and particularly the bravest people that night on Tiananmen Square were these rickshaw drivers who, whenever there was a pause in the shooting, they would go out and pick up the body.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a little like a romance between a CI. In a KGB operation. We go out Neither of us could talk about anything either of us was doing.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In today's context, my dad would never be admitted. I mean, people would see him as somebody from a potential saboteur or a potential spy from an enemy part of the world, the Soviet bloc, and that we don't need more refugees. I mean, I'm struck that when my dad was on the ship arriving in New York, there was a woman from Boston who was on the deck watching with him. My dad spoke almost no English, but she said to him, welcome young man. And then she corrected herself and said, welcome young American. And he was just so blown away that here he is. He's never set foot in America. He can't speak English. And this American woman is welcoming him as an already as a young American. And that deeply moved him. Spoke about it, and it's kind of the opposite of the attitude that we're seeing.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a great way when you're 16, that turned out to be a great way to impress 16-year-old girls. And it really was a, I mean, I love the writing. I love just the aesthetic pleasure from writing. I like being around interesting people. And the idea of being paid for it was truly incredibly cool. I was later in some danger of becoming a law professor, but I escaped that fate, fortunately.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when I turned 16 and got a driver's license, the local county newspaper hired me to write. And it was, I just couldn't believe that I was getting paid to go talk to interesting people and write stories about it. That's not the thing.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, we were way beyond the normal commuting range, so most people in Portland lived in Portland or nearby. But my parents really wanted to have a farm. And so we had this farm in Yam Hill, and they were pretty much the only people who commuted to Portland. And so it was a, I mean, I obviously had this connection to that larger world, but I was deeply embedded in the community. I was very active in future farmers of America and the school was a kind of very typical farm town school.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. So, my dad arrived in Oregon not speaking English and worked at a logging camp for a year to earn a little bit of money, to learn English, and then went to Reed College and studied political science, then applied to University of Chicago, political science department, and was initially told it was not accepted to a PhD program. His professor appealed and said this is a brilliant kid, and so they took him. And my mom was studying here, and they met at International House.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a byline. Will his first purchase on arriving in the US to teach himself English was a Sunday New York Times? There is something poetic about that.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He arrived and he would say his name was Christofovich. People tried to spell it, and that was pretty hopeless. So we shortened it to Christoph”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was in a concentration camp in Yugoslavia for a while and eventually made his way to France and decided that France was not a place that had a future for a Slavic immigrant and began to dream about coming to the US. And eventually made it, not speak English.”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my dad's family, they were Armenians who were living, it was actually kind of funny, my dad would describe him if you asked his origin, he would say he was from Romania. His sister would say she was Armenian, and his brother would say he's Polish. And my dad spoke to his brother when he would call in Polish and to his sister when she would call in Romanian. They were a very mixed up family and the flag would change periodically overhead. And then in 1940, the area, which was at that time Romania, was seized by the Soviet Union. A family was meanwhile busy spying for the free Polish government as part of a network sending information back to London. And so the family ended up being”
2020-02-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 369 — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source