Question: Whom would you like to interview, and what would you ask?

Transcript: Well of course what gets lost here in these conversations is a sense of the different cultures around the world . . . people who are not traveling in elite circles. There’s . . . There is a . . . There is an emerging cosmopolitan elite that really sees the entire world as their city: cosmopolitan. And that’s a . . . that’s a good thing, because that’s a binding agent that does . . . does help keep people together. I imagine the list of people you’re interviewing . . . you’re interviewing mostly come from what you would consider to be sort of that cosmopolitan elite. If you could go and interview a subsistence farmer in India, I imagine you’d find, of course, great human . . . human commonality. But also it’s just a very different . . . it would have to be a different mindset about what . . . what . . . if you were worried about just if the rain is coming. And of course that . . . If you were to interview that subsistence farmer about the concern about the rains coming, what happens if the rains don’t come? It would lead you back to the climate crisis because that’s what’s gonna happen. If we don’t figure this out, you’re gonna have a billion people in this place who, next year or the year after, the rain simply won’t come and they won’t have a choice.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: A hundred billion dollars to give away? Mmm. It will seem like a lack of imagination, but I really don’t respond to the question mentally. It’s . . . It’s . . . I don’t think what we’re lacking is resources. I think what we’re lacking is . . . is the will and the passion – or connecting the will and the passion – to where it needs to go. So Move On, for example, doesn’t go out fundraising. We raise all our money from . . . from wealthy . . . from wealthy contributors. We raise all our money from $25 donors and $40 donors, because most of the work of the organization is through those people. And getting them to make a commitment of their time and money is what’s most important. It’s really not about money. It’s really about us putting our attention to these important things.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: Well you know for me, looking at what we’re not doing, I have to come back to valuing _______. There is a . . . there’s a real sense among political and media ______ – a real suspicion amongst political and media ______ – that populism is a scary thing. That getting people involved and engaged is a scary thing, because what are those people . . . It really is a dangerous _______ that somehow living in D.C. gives you a perspective on the world that most of America doesn’t have. It is . . . It’s . . . D.C. is very vulnerable to group think. We saw this with the Iraq war for example. I think political and media _____ need to reach out. And when they do they’ll find tremendous power. Power as in power in a sense to make a difference, not the power to have a bigger place to live or a bigger salary. And that will feel good.

I think that the primary thing is for people to be thinking about their . . . of their . . . about the future. You know we tend to get so much drawn into the rat race in terms of comparing ourselves with the Jones’ and having more stuff. If everybody just took 5% or 10% of their _________ resources, and put it against looking after the future, the problems would . . . the problems would go away instantly. This is an incredibly wealthy, rich society. And we just need to put a little bit of that against the problems we face.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: We focus on the problems. We focus on the turmoil. We focus on the places where . . . where bombs are going off. I’m sure this will be remembered as a global age.

Another thing. Just . . . It was 1994 . . . around ’92, ’94 when the Internet started to take off. It’s only been a little bit more than a decade. We almost can’t imagine a time when we couldn’t communicate for free with anybody in the world. And yet that’s the world we’re living in today. So it’s . . . You know it’s truly a golden age in a sense that the world has become a single place, a single community.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: We all get impatient and things seem hard. But you know, the first Earth Day was in . . . was it 1970, I think? So it’s only been about 37 years since people even noticed there was an ecology to project . . . to protect. Well now we’re faced with literally saving the world. And so the problem has escalated very fast. But our consciousness of the problem has also . . . almost kept up. If we can more than keep up with the problem, then we can have a happy ending.

Recorded on: 7/5/2007

Transcript: Well certainly the war has to be a huge issue for the election. If we don’t figure out a way to disengage from that debacle, there will be no successful Congress. There will be no successful Presidency. We can’t face the big challenges we need to face. So that’s first and foremost. But then once we get out of that mess, we have to face . . . for example the climate crisis is the most pressing thing. We have to be . . . we have to have a plan because it’s all front loaded. If you wait 10 years, the problem gets twice as hard. If you wait 15 years, the problem gets three times as hard.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: The United States is a beacon for the world. And in the idea that . . . in the idea of freedom, the idea that liberty is a fundamental principle in how we operate our economies, in how we operate our power . . . how we run our power relationships. And so the United States has to figure out how to operate as a _______ power without losing that ability to be a beacon. And this is . . . this is a very hard problem. It’s not been done before when one country has so much military power, but the rest of the world is coming up economically and culturally. How does that have a happy ending? And I think we’re gonna have to be very smart to figure that out. And . . . and approach it with great humility.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: Well the biggest challenge has to be climate change because we have to figure out what we’re gonna do about it in the next five to 10 years. And again that’s, you know . . . In terms of using the technology to sort of help wire up democracy, that’s why we do what we do from the standpoint of the philosophy behind the work. We think that if we bring these people into the system, that the intelligence and resourcefulness that they bring to it will help us solve these big problems. It’s like wiring out our cultural mind. And if we don’t . . . if we fail . . . if we fail to get smart enough fast enough, it could be game over. We could see a really tragic time when our world goes from 6.5 billion today to nine billion in a few years, and then crashes to two billion. And that’s a time I personally I don’t want my kids or my grandkids to be going through.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: The founding of our country. It’s sort of a remarkable thing when you think about it. There’s the insight – the enlightening insight – that freedom is the foundation of our . . . of our security and our safety. It’s remarkable that it took hold so strongly, and it really is the foundation of our country. That is our hope for the future, that we don’t get mired in worrying so much and being so fearful that we give up who we are. So you know that . . . I refer back to that time over and over again.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Question: Do you have a personal philosophy?

Transcript: Mmm . . . not one I’ve thought about much. You know again, being sort of an engineer type, I enjoy the work of what we’re doing and tend to keep my eye on the ball on a day-by-day basis. Especially when you go through a time that’s very difficult when there are more losses than wins, you have to enjoy the workmanship of it . . . just doing the job. And so I suppose my personal philosophy is just around being a craftsman, doing a good job at what we do.

Question: Do religion and faith inform your worldview?

Transcript: Um . . . I think it . . . it plays in, in a sense of humility. I think one of the things we really have to guard against as individuals, and as . . . as a western culture or a country, is ______. It’s really believing we can know it all and then we can fix it. So you know that’s . . . We try to operate that way ourselves, not thinking we know . . . we know all the answers. But we know that if we act with integrity, that good things will happen.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: You know I think the most inspiring thing is when you see people stepping forward who really don’t have the capacity. They don’t have the . . . the money. They don’t have the time. They’re barely keeping their lives together and . . . but they still . . . they still make it happen. They still say, you know, “It’s so important I have to make the time to engage in the political issue,” whether it’s the war on Iraq or whatever. It’s very impressive. And there are so many people who do step up.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: Well actually it’s not in politics. But, you know, that’s because my background is as a programmer. And one of the . . . one of the programs I did once was a program that allowed . . . was an adaptation that allowed blind people to use a computer. And that was a real challenge. You know, it was a real challenge in that workmanship . . . the ability to do this . . . and that was something that I was able to pull off on my . . . mostly on my own. It was just that craftsmanship. And getting into management, you know, which is what we did when we built our software company, and what we’re doing in the Move On work. As an engineer type, I have trouble valuing the engineering of organizations as much as I should. So I, you know . . . my proudest achievement was something that I was able to do hands on and see it at the end of the process.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: I think politics was getting very insular, and it’s not . . . of course it’s not just us. The technology. . . the communications technology has enabled new groups, new actors to be involved in politics and bring in a much more diverse group of folks into the mix. I believe that politics was getting too insular, that you have this sense of a broadcast politics where a few leads in Washington discuss things in dinner parties perhaps; and then that becomes the story of the day n the broadcast media. And what we watched . . . what all of America really watched politics for was the game – the horserace – not . . . not how we’re actually solving problems we all face.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: Our analysis was that when you look at what’s going on in Washington, it must be because not enough good people are involved. It must be because politics has been seen as so cynical and so negative, it drives away the best talent in this country. Because the town . . . the country is full of talented, resourceful, smart people. They’re not working in Washington. Well there are certainly some smart people in Washington, but not enough. Not enough of that good, American spirit is going into the work. So our mission has been to help as a service to help people figure out how to connect to that ______.

one of the impacts that I think I’ve been most surprised by is just the modeling of the way of doing this work. That many organizations involved in politics come at the work from the standpoint of, “We know the answers. We’re just gonna find the biggest soapbox we can and tell you what the answers are, and then the world will be a better place.” Well that’s not the way we approach it. We approach it to say we all are facing big problems. The world community is facing a lot of very important, tough problems. We don’t . . . We don’t know the answers. You don’t know the answers. But together, if we connect and we work together, we can find these answers. And modeling that way of engaging people – and engaging people not as we’re above them and we’re telling them what to do, the education and informing mission – ours is a service mission of connecting and helping folks be effective. And that . . . modeling that, I think has been taken up by a lot of good groups.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: I work with a group of people – it’s an organization called MoveOn.org – to help Americans be more effective in engaging in politics.

It was an accident really, starting Move On. My wife and I had started a software company prior to Move On and had just sold it, and we were looking for our next business to start. And it was a time when we sort of raised our head for a couple of seconds and said, “Oh my gosh! What’s going on in Washington?” And it was during the Clinton impeachment years. Things were . . . seemed quite a mess. Coming from business, we wondered why we were wasting our national lives on this nonsense. And we just thought to put up this petition online that just said, you know, “Congress should censor the President and move on to pressing issues facing the nation.” It seemed like common sense. Everybody that we talked to said, “That makes a lot of sense. Let’s just do that.” So we did that. We put that up online. And in a week’s time, 250,000 people had signed. And then we said, “Oh my gosh!” Coming from, you know, Silicon Valley . . . coming from the dot com era, we knew that it was more that you could do with being able to reach 250,000 for free.

The greatest joy really for us is, you know . . . This has been a hard time for the country, I think. A lot of people have seen what appears to be the country, you know, going in the wrong direction in its international foreign policy; a country not respecting its roots . . . its Democratic roots. And what’s really been a joy is to be in touch with so many people who really do get it . . . who really do get what America’s about and are willing to work for that.

I suppose the struggle is hard work. The struggle is dealing with losses, because when you . . . When you deal with hard problems like this, it doesn’t all come to you in a day, or a week, or month. And so we’ve had to really rest on that joy of working with great people through . . . through a very hard time. And now things actually seem to be shifting in the country. The country seems to be moving in a different direction, and it’s a very optimistic time for us actually.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: My name is Wes Boyd. I’m from Berkeley, California. I grew up when I was a kid in Michigan. And so it was a fairly small town – although Ann Arbor is a college town – small town way to grow up. And that was very comfortable. I look back on it with, you know, a real fond feeling. But then my folks moved out to Berkeley, California when I was about 11 years old. And that’s a very different place. So we’ve experienced, you know, quite a few different . . . different kinds of towns. San Francisco is very cosmopolitan and the Midwest is very different.

I didn’t really think much about what I was going to do when I grew up. I . . . I was working very young. I started programming when I was about 14, and so I was working at different jobs from that point on. And it was just a passion to make the computer do interesting things.

Recorded on: 7/5/07