The Mythology of Personal Responsibility

Host Elise Loehnen sits down with Pulitzer Prize–winning authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn to talk about their new book, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope. It’s a story about our country that begins in rural Yamhill, Oregon—where Kristof grew up—and moves to the Dakotas and Oklahoma and New York and Virginia and everywhere in between. Through vivid personal reporting and the lives of real Americans, Kristof and WuDunn explore working-class America and the all ways our system has neglected and damaged these communities. They expose the mythology of personal responsibility, the tightrope that families have been forced to walk, and the devastating effect of one small slip when you have no safety net. They remind us that no community is “other,” and they show us that even issues as large and complex as addiction, homelessness, and incarceration are not unsolvable. We have the toolboxes; now we need the will. “There’s obviously no silver bullet,” says Kristof. “But we know how to make a big difference.” (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

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