The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – C-SPAN and Library of Congress Announce New Primetime Book Series for Fall 2023 “Books that Shaped America”

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Welcome to the Chris Voss Show, my family and friends. Welcome to the big show, the Chris Voss Show. The family loves you but doesn't judge you. As always, we have the most brilliant minds and wonderful guests on the show.

Starting point is 00:00:48 We've got an amazing guest, and we're going to be talking about an amazing channel on the show. You may have heard of it. It's called C-SPAN. And we're going to be talking about a wonderful new primetime book series that they have coming out. In the meantime, be sure to refer the show to your family, friends, or relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, all the great authors we have on the meantime, be sure to refer the show to your family, friends, or relatives. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, all the great authors we have on the show, and YouTube.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, the big LinkedIn newsletter over there.

Starting point is 00:01:14 And as always, we're trying to be cool, young, and hip. The TikTok, the TikTokity, as I like to say. No one says that but me. Chris Voss, one false over there. We're going to be talking about an amazing new series today. C-SPAN and the Library of Congress have announced a joint original feature production for the fall of 2023 called Books That Shaped America. It's a 10-part series that's going to air Monday starting September 18th at 9 p.m. Eastern. And it's billed as a literary journey tracing America's history by exploring masterpieces

Starting point is 00:01:53 and literature that have had and still have today a major impact on society. And we're joined by Paul Orgel. He's here with us today on his amazing run that he's had with C-SPAN from the fall of 1991. He's led coverage of many congressional and political events. He serves as host of Morning Call-In program, Washington Journal, and is currently the executive producer of C-SPAN's newest series, Books That Shaped America. Paul's role includes generating all editorial content, conducting podcast interviews, and coordinating with various network platforms. Prior to C-SPAN, Paul worked as a news reporter, producer, anchor, manager at several network

Starting point is 00:02:42 affiliated stations in Pennsylvania, Florida, upstate New York, and Missouri. He was born in New York City, raised in northern New Jersey, and has a bachelor's degree from University of Scranton and a master's degree from Northwest University, Northwestern University. I apologize there. Paul, welcome to the show. Hey, Chris. It's good to be with you. Thanks for having me. Greetings from the D.C. area. There you go. And I feel like we should say something like, and we're going to open up the call lines now for people to call in. Paul, give us any dot coms you want people, any plugs you want people to check out.

Starting point is 00:03:18 Well, this series that we're doing, Books that Changed America, will be available on all of our platforms. So regular C-SPAN television, the traditional television, but C-SPAN.org as well, our website. We have a special website for the series. It's C-SPAN.org slash Books That Shaped America. We also have an app, Chris, C-SPAN Now, it's called, a great feature for viewers around the country, especially those on the go. And we also have C-SPAN Radio. So this series we're going to do will be across all of our platforms. And that's a great way to reach as many people as possible where they are at the time they feel like watching, right? There you go. And you guys have been around since what, 1979 as a public service cable

Starting point is 00:04:04 television industry yep 79 our house coverage started in that year the senate coverage started in 86 but we've been at it over 40 plus years now covering uh the halls of congress the white house the courts any public policy event that uh people are being talked uh people are talking about. And our role is to be part of the process for our viewers so that they can be as informed as possible. So when they go to the polls, they can cast the most intelligent votes they think they can based on everything they know.

Starting point is 00:04:39 And the most important thing about C-SPAN is we don't do editing. We don't do our own commentary. We just show you the events as they happen and let you decide for yourself what the real deal is. There you go. We need more of that in America, I think. Don't we? Maybe? I don't know. I'm asking for your opinion, so we might be crossing the line there. But everyone's familiar and seeing the great stuff. And of course, you guys keep an eye on the old congress there and what those boys are up to and girls

Starting point is 00:05:08 uh same thing with the the presidents and and other stuff can we get some cameras in the scotus there i don't know do you guys cover oh gosh we've been interested in that for years we have pushed and tried uh uh in recent years they have been a little bit more accommodating with audio, even same-day audio from the court, day-of audio. But it's something we will never give up on. I don't think anybody in the media would give up on that because it's all about access. It's all about real time. It's all about allowing viewers to see things as they happen so, again, they can make up their own mind about something. I would love it if you guys and the media could get into federal courts for upcoming trials. to see things as they happen. So again, they can make up their own mind about something.

Starting point is 00:05:46 I would love it. If you guys in the media could get into federal courts for upcoming trials. I think, I think there's some, you know, there's some interesting things going on there for what's going to happen in the upcoming trials, but let's move on to your guys's new primetime book series. Where did this come out of?

Starting point is 00:06:02 My understanding is there was a, another series you guys did of the hundred books that shaped America that maybe this was inspired by. You know, it's interesting, Chris. For years, we have done what we would call special company-wide or corporate history series on various topics. We've done the American Presidents. We've done the First Ladies. We've done series in the past, and we wanted to make a return to a prime time series and so a couple of months ago we batted around some ideas for a series might this work might that work and then we realized that um our our book tv coverage which can be seen every weekend is now 25 old. What a great way to celebrate that anniversary and really pull together everything we do at C-SPAN.

Starting point is 00:06:49 Books coverage, history coverage, public affairs programming, viewer engagement. And we knew that the Library of Congress about a decade ago put out a list of 100 books that shaped America. And we said, why don't we ask them at the library to be our partners? Why don't we access their list, pick our 10 books for starters, and do a series? And the library loved the idea. And we've just had a great relationship working with them in these months that have followed. And I hope it continues after this year's series. But we are just getting started on the 18th with our first episode, and we'll be on Mondays for 10 straight weeks starting September 18th. So that's the genesis of it. Many ideas were put out there, but we settled on this one. It just felt right to us at this time. There you go. And so when you say these are the books that shaped America, what

Starting point is 00:07:47 is that based on? Is it books that had the most influence on America or maybe discussed American life? It's all of the above. It's a combination of things, Chris. These are books that were either much talked about at the time, they were prize winners, they changed the course of history in the country, or they allowed parts of the country to see other parts of the country for the first time.

Starting point is 00:08:20 So it's really a sort of a nationwide look, and what we decided to do, Chris, was take a look at each of the eras in our 10 books. So not pick 10 books from the 1700s or the 2000s, but to start at the beginning of the country, talk about his expansion. We look at the slavery period. We move into the 20th century. An eclectic mix of topics, authors. We wanted diversity of topics, authors, people who wrote these books. But I think if there's one word that speaks to all of these, it's some type of change took place in the country as a result of these books, beginning with our very first episode with common sense the pamphlet that

Starting point is 00:09:06 thomas paine wrote in 1776 and changed the course of our country you know it was only six months after he wrote that document urging independence from britain that the declaration of independence was signed that's about as much change as you can uh muster with uh one piece of work and it sort of goes on from there. So it's change, it's exposing people to the lives and the experiences of other people. We get into policy changes as well. What's being talked about in this country? What are the sides of those arguments? So it's like a it's really a wide look at the country's history through the words of these great authors. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break.

Starting point is 00:09:51 Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as CEO. And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com.

Starting point is 00:10:30 Now back to the show. There you go. Now, I was kind of surprised that a couple of my favorite books aren't on here. Where the Wild Things Are grew up in that book and Dr. Seuss. Why do you guys hate those books so much? No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. No, we don't hate them. But to get to your question, the thing we learned after picking

Starting point is 00:10:51 the 10 books is that we could have had many, many lists of 10 books. And maybe will in the future, if this goes well. We wanted fiction and nonfiction on the list, which is a little bit of a nice twist for us because we tend to cover nonfiction books most of the time. But to add a Huckleberry Finn or a Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Willa Cather's My Antonia, that was a nice little twist for us. But all of them have to do with the country and its status and what people were talking about at that time, what they were debating, what they were arguing. So it's a question we've gotten before. We don't want to be in a position, Chris, to say, who are we to say what the top 10 books are of all time,

Starting point is 00:11:37 right? So what we're doing- Pull your C-spin, damn it. You'll do what you want. That's right. So what we are doing is we are making it clear to people that the Library of Congress had this list of 100, which, who knows, might grow in the future. We picked our 10. But what do you think? So we are enabling people to call in, send us a text, communicate with us on social media, and tell us what books they think shaped America. There's one big, nice twist to that, Chris. At the Library of Congress right now, I was just there last night, is a kiosk about the size of my basement here where I'm working out of today. And it says Books That Shaped America, C-SPAN, Library of Congress.

Starting point is 00:12:22 And inside there is a video camera. And people can go in there, press a button, and for 30 seconds tell us what books they think shaped America. Those are all over our website now that will be at the Library of Congress all fall. People can send us their own videos through their cell phones and we're going to put some of these on the air in each program. So yeah, it's cool. What we're trying to do is extend the conversation, the national conversation about books, and not just say it's us speaking or the library speaking, but it's the whole country speaking at the same time. We just want to encourage books and reading, learning. It makes us all better, right? Smarter, better, more informed,

Starting point is 00:13:04 more sensitive to what's going on in other people's lives, not just our own. And we need more of that in this country. More people reading and doing stuff. It's interesting, Chris. I was talking with Dr. Carla Hayden, the Library of Congress, a few weeks ago, and she reminded me of a study that I think, don't quote me on the number, but I think around 45 or 46% of us didn't read a single book last year. Now, there are many reasons for that, I'm sure. But we want to do our part to encourage reading in this country at all age levels. There you go.

Starting point is 00:13:39 I mean, I'm 55, and I believe the Federalist Papers here are on the list, or the Federalist it's called. Those are the Federalist Papers, right? They are. The terminology changed over time. These essays that Hamilton, Madison, and Jay wrote under a pseudonym, Publius. They didn't post their names because they thought nobody would listen to them because of the political tensions of the time. But they just started out as a series of essays published in newspapers in New York, urging that state to ratify the Constitution. Those 85 essays were compiled into a book, 1788. It was called The Federalist. You and I now refer to these papers, these essays,

Starting point is 00:14:22 as The Federalist Papers. So, it's just a little twist on terminology, but those were very influential documents, even up to present day, because they're cited all the time. What was the intent of the founders when they wrote this material? There you go. I'm halfway through them, and they're quite lengthy, but they're really interesting to read, because you see, like you mentioned, their founding sort of vision or their idea, halfway through them and they're quite lengthy but they're they're really interesting to read because you see they're like you mentioned they're they're they're founding sort of vision or their idea and concepts of how to build out the states how to how to have an overseeing federalist government

Starting point is 00:14:55 the reason for having a a central uh federal government oh and and not just a bunch of crazy states running around uh the military, the planning. It was amazing the foresight that they had. And, you know, you look at the kind of, it's not really a finished product because we're always in pursuit of a more perfect union, which we'll probably always be in a pursuit in this space. But, you know, you see the kind of half-assed finished product, and you're like, damn, those guys were thinking about some stuff there 250 years ago yeah they they sure were chris and uh they were just very unique and special people who

Starting point is 00:15:31 wanted to see the future of of this country that was as yet not not terribly uh developed at the time when you go through the federalist essays sure you could pick different pieces from each one. The writing can be very stilted and official sounding and lofty. And I draw a great contrast between the writing there and the writing in Thomas Paine's Common Sense. He wrote simple, short sentences that made specific, sharp points against the British crown, urging people to declare independence. Common sense was meant not just to be read, but to be listened to. So there were people who were listening to other people reading this in taverns or other meeting places, many of whom couldn't read or read very well.

Starting point is 00:16:20 So that was Paine's approach. I just noted a strong difference in language for anybody who's pouring through these, but I agree, they are fascinating if you can spare the time to work through them. Yeah, and you can pick them up on Audible and get through them very quickly, and I love to consume that when I go to the gym. But the great thing about this series is it's turned me on to a few books that I never really have put on my list and I should think about. There's, of course, the famous History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of

Starting point is 00:16:57 Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Common Law, The Common Law, I should say, by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Uh, of course, a big favorite. I grew up with Mark Twain, the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Tom Sawyer didn't make the list there. We had to pick one from Mr. Twain, right? Wow.

Starting point is 00:17:17 For now. There you go. And so much good stuff to choose from. My Antonia by Willa Cather. Is it Cather? Cather. Cather. I'll have to look into that one, I guess. That's one that I'm not up to par on. Some people consider that the best written piece of literature ever in this country. Willa Cather was a very, very well-known and popular writer. She's actually very popular with our viewers whenever we've done

Starting point is 00:17:45 anything about Willa Cather. But born not far from where I'm sitting, she's in, born in Virginia, but moves to Nebraska and writes a story based in Red Cloud, Nebraska in the prairie about two people who met two young people um uh they were they were going west going to nebraska to become homesteaders you know the 1862 homestead act gave land to people who were willing to come to desolate parts of the country and work that land so this story talks about immigrants from Europe pushing west, coming into Nebraska, what their experience was like as immigrants, the hardships that they faced, and it's a bit of a love story as well. And the two main folks in the book separate closer to adulthood but at least get back together at the end not in a

Starting point is 00:18:45 romantic sense but just in a friendly sense and she writes about all of that in some very just very flowery but but but descriptive language she was credited with helping us understand that part of the country which not many people knew about at that time because it was just being populated right so she's uh just a fascinating writer willa cather she was a magazine uh person a writer and editor worked for the old mcclure's magazine way way back when um lived in pittsburgh uh lived in greenwich village. Um, she was just a, a, a fascinating, uh, fascinating writer. And we look forward to featuring her on the series.

Starting point is 00:19:32 There you go. Uh, next up in November, you guys will have their eyes. We're watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, uh, free to choose a personal statement by Milton and Rose Friedman. Uh, you didn't go with the other Milton book, Paradise Lost. Isn't that about America?

Starting point is 00:19:52 Is that about the Trump administration? I don't know. And lastly, the words of Cesar Chavez by himself in 2002. So you cover a span of 1776 all the way to 2002. As you guys feature these on the show, it looks like you're going to probably do your usual call-in stuff. And then are you going to

Starting point is 00:20:12 read from them or are you going to do synopsis on them? We are. We're going to do all the above, Chris. So we'll be on for an hour and a half and the segments will feature in our studio, a host and an anchor guest who is either an historian or a biographer, college person, somebody who knows a great deal about the book, but the author and the time that the book was written, the time that the book was portrayed. We will have viewer phone calls, social media input from folks. We are reaching deep into the schools in the country and we'll get input from teachers on how they teach some of these books. Huckleberry Finn would be an example and the challenges they have in teaching them, what kind of questions they get from students. We're also visiting certain parts of the country, Chris, to take video and talk to people

Starting point is 00:21:01 about places portrayed in the books. So Nebraska is one of them. We'll be heading to Nebraska. We're going to be heading down to central Florida to a town called Eatonville, which is where Zora Neale Hurston was from. And that's where part of the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was based. Rich, rich history there. So we look forward to going down and taking some great pictures and

Starting point is 00:21:25 talking to some people, looking through Zora Neale Hurston's papers, which are at the University of Florida. So it's really going to be a broad effort to try to tell this story. And you know, when I started, I was kind of worried. I said, these are books. How do we turn books into television programs, right?'m i'm fairly confident and we'll find out once we start whether these can be more made to to to to to look alive you know what i mean with with the content and to get to your other part of your question yes we will be reading from the books um either long quotes or short quotes um I was just working on our model for the Frederick Douglass book. Gosh, it is a painful book to read. The graphic language, not the graphic language,

Starting point is 00:22:20 the graphic descriptions by Douglass of what he saw as a child, what he went through as an adult, how his eyes continued to be open as he escaped to freedom and saw the North. It's not a long book, maybe about 110 pages or so, but it is very gripping. And that's the kind of descriptive language that we need to bring to the series because we know that not everybody has read these books so any way we can bring them to the audience in a way that will help them understand it um will be a benefit to everybody there you go have you guys considered having the authors on the show well all the authors are are no longer with us there are descendants who are around um but uh um we will uh we'll see what happens in the future because if we were to decide in the future to do

Starting point is 00:23:17 more contemporary books books that are well into this this era i could see the authors coming on but that's a question for down the line. There you go. I think we've got some love coming in here on the Collins as we like to use them off of YouTube. I adore C-SPAN. They've done so much good by informing the public about what's going on than any other TV station

Starting point is 00:23:38 with their book fests and live streams of congressional events than all the others. Thank you, Cheyenne Smith. Thank you. Do a little call in there. for doing the little call-in there. We got one little call-in. We didn't even have to open up the lines, so there you go.

Starting point is 00:23:51 I think this is great. We love books, of course, here on the Chris Foss Show. We feature all the great authors of the newest books that come out. We tried getting those older authors, like some of the ones you had on, and their PR agents evidently don't have PR agents back then, so they're not returning our calls at this point in time but uh we'll just keep calling but uh one thing uh have you guys done a show on like reading the constitution and

Starting point is 00:24:15 how people should like read the damn thing already you know the the constitution was one of our original ideas for a series and I'm sure it'll still be an idea as time goes on. You know we've had conversations about the history of the Constitution, what it means today, obviously everything we're talking about, and then we've we've had authors on, we've had panel discussions, but I think a step-by-step walk through the Constitution I think would be of great value. You know we're really good friends with the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, run by Jeffrey Rosen, who is a good friend of ours. And we are always talking about ways to bring that Constitution to life and to have as many conversations as possible.

Starting point is 00:24:59 So at a place like C-SPAN, the window is wide open to do a lot of things like this. They're describing a book series. Yes, we cover the most important public policy events and the congressional debates, but there's this extra door that we can always take people through that gives them a deeper, more historical understanding of what really went on and is going on in the country. There you go. One of my pet peeves is I think we need to pass a law that if you say,

Starting point is 00:25:27 if you quote the Constitution as what you think it said, you're probably the person who's never read the Constitution. You know what I mean? There's a lot of people on social media going, the Constitution says this. And if you've read the Constitution, you're like, you haven't read the Constitution at all, have you? mean there's a lot of that you see a lot of tiktok videos of interviews at different rallies and people are always quoting the constitution and you're like i'm pretty i i

Starting point is 00:25:56 read it last year it doesn't say that a lot of great press people keep a copy with them but i i think we just have a need to have a national sit-down reading where we all just sit down for a day and go maybe we should have national constitution day we're all sit down for a day and just revisit the document and go okay so uh let's clean this up this is what it says eh this is what it doesn't say is everyone clear we all right let's commence you know there is actually a uh something called constitution day it's actually coming up a week from Sunday, I believe. It's the 17th. And it's a way for people around the country, teachers and others in the National Constitution Center and C-STEP to focus on this founding document of ours and have a conversation.

Starting point is 00:26:42 But I think what you're trying to say is we should do more and more and more of that. And I would agree. I would agree. It only makes us better. And it's such a great document. It's easy to read. I mean, and a lot of people that seem to be trying to quote the Constitution and rattling on about it seem to need to be able to read at that low-grade level that it's written at for the common people. Yeah, what I found interesting about working on The Federalist was that these essays that Hamilton and Madison and Jay wrote were in large part responses to other essays written by anti-federalists. And they said, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, we better get going and push back. So they wrote a huge number of essays in a relatively short amount of time and got them published. And sort of their goal, for lack of a better word, was to kind of pummel their way into this argument that they made and really urge the states to do what they saw as the the right thing at the time

Starting point is 00:27:45 back and forth and and everything on all that i think we had a historian historian on uh who wrote a book that talked about um he's most likely was on your guys shows uh but he wrote a book about uh the power of the press and how the press was used and i guess back in early days, some of the early presidents and early folks that wrote the Constitution were all getting their own printing presses and writing lurid editorials and essays back and forth, throwing all sorts of stuff back and forth at each other. Mm-hmm. We have a long history of that in this country. It's not something that's new. It's been going on for a long time, just in different ways. There you go.

Starting point is 00:28:30 Now, a lot of it happens in a mass, mass media setting, right? Especially social media, but it's not a new thing. Now it's on Twitter, whatever X it's called or whatever it is. I think next week it's called bankruptcy. So any further thoughts, Paul, on your guys' upcoming series and shows? It's just one of the most fascinating things I've ever worked on in my career. It's to be able to create this content with my wonderful colleagues at C-SPAN and at the Library of Congress has been really exhilarating. I've learned new things. Other things were being reinforced. Maybe I have my own different opinion that won't come on the air,

Starting point is 00:29:10 but an opinion about something that I read now that maybe I read earlier in my life. So it's just been very personally fulfilling, and I hope it's very fulfilling for the guests. And it's just a great project for the company to take part in, a wonderful companion to everything else we do there you go there's a couple books here that i'm gonna i'm gonna put on my uh audible list over there good come on to the audible for the gym so you guys have turned me on to some great stuff of course we love great books and and uh the more people can read and know more in this country is is really important so i'm glad

Starting point is 00:29:43 you guys are doing this and we'll look forward to it uh and all that good stuff so thank you very much for coming on paul uh give us any dot coms you want people to go check out uh c-span.org is the place to go c-span.org books that shaped america is a wonderful way to go as well if you go there you'll see videos that we already have posted you'll see images from the already have posted. You'll see images from the different eras, backgrounds on the books and the authors, and that thing is going to continue to grow over the next few months. One great resource, cspan.org slash books that shaped America. There you go. Thank you very much, Paul, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:30:21 Thanks, Chris. Good to be with you. There you go. And thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris F.com for chest christmas linkedin.com for chest christmas and the tickety-tockety over there on christmas one does c-span have a tiktok channel these days uh-huh we do not have a tiktok channel i don't know we need to get you guys hooked up there but we are pushing as much as we can in all areas of uh there you go we need those 13 to 17 year olds. They've been signing up for the show because they love the intro and TikTok.

Starting point is 00:30:50 And so we need to get you guys over there so they can, they can start reading. Very good. Very good. Thank you very much for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.

Starting point is 00:31:00 Take care. Bye-bye. Thank you very much, Paul.

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – C-SPAN and Library of Congress Announce New Primetime Book Series for Fall 2023 “Books that Shaped America”

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