America's Highways & More

so i seventy was never come across aggressive it isn't dead ends into denver today on cape york reasons we take a look at the highways that crisscross our state and our country i n k mcintyre we'll also visit with relationship expert harriet lerner on the art of the apology and why it's so hard to get it right finally a conversation with elizabeth farnsworth of public television's newshour sees the author of a new memoir by train through time ally for real and imagined but first dan mcnichol is the author of the roads that built america the incredible story of the us interstate system in this encore broadcast mcnichol says that although president dwight d eisenhower is rightly credited with creating the interstate highway system the idea goes all the way back to george washington university's too generals of know these two american heroes and when they become the president i say each one of them turned to roads as the solution to keep the country

safe and to keep it together eisenhower with the now famous and sometimes infamous interstate system that's called a dwight d eisenhower system of national system or their state and defense highways right there in the name andrew washington laid out the national road there was a call that was laid out who is neiman colin's trail an indian trailer turn into his the fruits of of progress and fortune this is famous river the delaware company to go out and get furs and materials and that and eisenhower and washington both obsessed about billing the roads because it was a matter of of homeland security would become account you mention that that first national roadway is based on an indian trail to what extent do our nation's highways mimic or parallel old native american trails you know you really there's so much fun chalet insider of roads and user desire lines

these airlines that have been explored sensation times and we just keep elaine down new forms of of transportation along them so though the first trails we're in the intros the unions were hunting and as they were tricked jason wilde game of a baby girl familiar path washington file that as a young man building his fortunes he fell that into the west the great west in ohio proof that the time not jazz is not california end and that was his way of trade but i think is a man who literally laid out the road in fall that road and this is a life on that road george washington eye he knew that this pass this this desire line out west with a logical road to build the next generation of travel and that little water path a smooth path baby took out the trees and stagecoach as were soon running oysters and to ohioans of the depression people can eat those remarkable the time so let's jump forward in the nineteen fifties when president dwight eisenhower looks at the nation

and says we really need an interstate highway system what was their direct impetus for him to do so eisenhower was looking at this as the president on stage the commander in chief was the best way to keep the country proper mole safe and defended it he knew that oh those source loss of life along these roads are they called us route sixty six bloody sixty six because are some a head arms i n and with a divided highway the travel so much safer and he knew that and he said this over over again in his state of the union addresses usually brilliant campaigner he branded this idea and he pushed it out and he relentlessly to his first entire administration campaigned to get this road built through the state of the union often and he also signaled commerce a week we are stuck in traffic and if we can on bach or cells from that that congestion we will we will profit and lastly he knew that in the nuclear age it was very important to diversify to to spread out our our defense that injuries

and an important events locations and we did that eventually through what we call urban sprawl now but we we we moved out to the suburbs and we were able to spread ourselves out he also obsessed especially nineteen fifty five made more changes in his diary then about make a holocaust ever but he was very very concerned about after nicholas strike what would happen and the rebuilding he thought and the rescue and rebuilding would all take place along interstate system and president eisenhower handsome firsthand experience with just howled bad the roads were in terms of getting from one part of the country to another dating back to his experience in world war one even earlier back in kansas early evolution as a child for to abilene and the chisholm trail that the rector ends it because often taxes and was a movement of cattle but he knew that this peace movement the good news a place of the road for the military especially was going to help one the economy into the military there's this there's this constant back and forth between the

two one the stronger the road the better the economy the more strong we are as a nation with a defense of nowhere and the better the defense network we have the more we can depend on that road that we build for autonomy say goes back and forth and he knew that anything he built and he later warned us against city the military muscle complex but he built up that military muscle complex for one or two and he knew how important the road system would be for factories for workers for for shipping supplies not for marching troops down but for just moving the economy alone to mobilize one of the things you say in your book the roads that built america is that the genius of the interstate system is in its uniformity when you know that verrilli interface doesn't belong to stumble upon this obvious note that is people complain all time about how ben ali the roads aren't on the interstate system how boring it is but it's

designed to be boring is designed to be predictable is designed to keep you alive it was often the case when the big storm and our road to be on the pennsylvania turnpike in the nineteen forties then suddenly broken to an ent or economic order and the roadsides would change the paper would change and those kind of sudden changes in and surface can be deadly of the idea of these interstate system is using you though it you know were with your washington state run for grower in california it's all the same and it's very efficient there are no obstructions is not free as in you won't be charged for is not going to cost anything is just free of obstruction that's the realtor a freeway and by eliminating eliminating obstructions and limiting the access the often on ramps are you much more efficient flow so touched me about the uniformity of the roads themselves why is it that interstate highway has to have in order to

b and it has to have that has a great point of this whole system is is a democracy and concrete steel it's amazing because it's a volunteer prof rubel for the state's venture where the states built their space systems with federal funding the federal government say here's a chuckle build it they sit you build your specifications we will reimburse you it's a big difference right so the states were motivated to build it as the feds water that they did the only did do it correctly they got to check the reimbursement check for ninety ninety percent of the costs ten cent dollars the states work on them in the fifties sixties seventies but what is that look like you the basics it's a tall foot traveling to them always no less than two in one direction four lanes both ways it's a it's a ten foot greg allen on the right it's a three foot shoulder on the left the green white santelli we're going to run a white wanted to find out what national park is at a blue and white one to tell you as a service ahead it's abridged is not lower than sixteen feet to get underneath it if you have a minuteman missile ballistic missile you

have to be telling for that the defense of that aspect of the interstate system and it's super mergers ingredients it's gentle way for the driver and this is easy to see around corners because there so on sharp and all those things come together possibly over forty seven thousand miles of predictability so you just hit on one factor that i that was really interesting in reading your book and that's that the roads can vary a lot in terms of their slope which person will challenges when it came to crossing the rocky mountains hasn't used to toss out right he's most interesting for the interstate system from a factoid of unfair point the highest point of the interstate system is underground in a time all over the rocky mountain eleven thousand plus feet going under the continental divide i mean they just nailed all these approach those engineering a remarkable achievements it

once when they built the eisenhower tunnel aptly named after him the love colorado mamie his wife was from colorado and the eisenhower tunnel was not going to happen with the i seventy was never come across the great city can isn't dead end into denver and the denver colorado coalition congressman governor types went to washington said no we'll take that line that simple line and drag it across colorado and that's what real adult western colorado you just mentioned one of the two great interstates that crisscross of kansas i seventy as well as our other interstate i thirty five tiny little bit about those two interstate highways is abysmal of all these numbers and even really know we ought to just have fun he says but across two interstates you know where you are so i thirty five and i seventy on that that's kansas that that is one of the great north south highway said they're these grey interstates the gray ones the big ones and in zero or five

and you have two of them and i seventy goes east and west as the even numbers do and i believe i was north and south of the odd number ones do all he could tell engineers laid out the system ranks and i thirty five cadets camera with mexico to invite states that says that there's a question about commerce is probably i thirty five you just heard someone of a huge innovations in the interstate system which was predictability and uniformity in the naming and the highways which is something so they say can we just take it for granted probably many of us have never really given much thought to how or highways are numbered but before that us interstate highway system was developed in nineteen fifty six were roads just named whatever the silk road or the national road or the dixie trail or it goes on and the roses lover of roads being named anthony special names they felt gave that robot

the lincoln highway special meaning and when they decided to go the numbers are nineteen twenty six it was seen as a radical activist obama said you know what we'll take all these dirt trails name them with number two and numerically lay out this interstate system and it was a very large very ambitious idea and then in nineteen fifty six another interstate system was laid out with numbers as well but that's why in the numbering system you see the lowest numbers on the red white and blue shields in the southwest san diego and tj de get higher as they go north and they go east to maine which has the highest number of the film read what a blue interstates of system shields and send the route sixty six is the us routes they began on the east coast in nineteen twenty six o one runs up and on the east coast and then as they go west as they go north a higher and higher number and i

was a mirror image of each other just to keep them from being a confusing but those numbers you really are so important for people once again to the point of you know for many people though they are a nineteen oh three that was not a map of the nine states with roads on it you had to make it up and when eisenhower won across the country in nineteen ninety nine as part of a military convoy i mean this is a well funded military adventure across united states really big road trip as eisenhower sought as a young lieutenant colonel is excited to be on it but they were looking for borrowers through looking for offenses they were looking for signs they had to have on indian and harley davidson motorcycles scouts easily us army core guys go out ahead of the convoy to find the national road to find the only the lincoln highway is it was not on maps that they had a day to explore and figure out where that road was was more in their minds and on paper that was on the road on on the land and now we have these roads that were either didn't have your

gps you could find a way across the country one of their organization's was really key and helping people get from a baby was the aaa which really sprang out of this need to figure out how do i get from here to my destination of the mighty i'm a grandfather had a triple a cardinal instagram is on his car you're out of mind and out to its rhetoric and that was there are there is there a brand that made them famous and i'm going to myself when a little boy office of the ghetto bunch of maps that would take me to my destination but you're right in uniting under i think aaa was the first of the one of the first to lay out the country and roads and you imagine this association that is so big no we're helping travelers and it was it was fun those exciting poses a dangerous to go off into the hinterlands because he became a fighter way back in time for supper and these road maps eventually helped lead a better and better and the naming of the rhodes went to numbers as a way for the

weight and keep it simple what that the addition of the un the hundred numbers like to seventy or four thirty five that circles can safely with that pattern there that the pattern is remarkable if you look to the north south east west word work twice as long as we are are all wide aware were twice as long east west as we are high north and south and that the numbers of the interstates the odd numbers going north and south there there thirty five of them go across the country even ones are longer like i ninety three thousand miles along swarm the system and those are numbers were not as healthy evil as go east and west but then you have in addition to those sixty two super highways that make up the interstate system you have the spurs and loops and the loops are ones that will bring you back to the interstate system if you leave it so driving around a city you often see a lapel way if you're on it it's the end of the even number of brings you back to the road

that you're on so there are ninety five and you come across forty five you'll be sure you get back to ninety five eventually if you see you one ninety five b where that's the smirk the issues you straight out to a destination but doesn't a sobering the backless to backtrack so the the spurs the belts they all add into the system for a total of forty seven thousand miles wow that's a lot of highway with a lot of highway but it's it's only two percent not even of our total roses are we about four million miles of road and more than half of them are paved which is a remarkable figure if you think throughout the mile service and then the big road as people call the truckers call the interstate system the big road the big road is less than two percent but it handles twenty five percent of the traffic and it's so efficient that he keeps trucks and most desirable vehicles from city streets from the roads and from their world back country are are you are for popular roads and the ones that are so

beautiful but people loved to drive on are one wildly dangerous they might be seen it but they're dangerous and are not a sufficient but because tropics on lisa fischer rode the us routes and the other blue highways in america i have been preserved it's really wonderful to think that that message i think is on that big road that you like to complain about being boring i'm really glad you mention that because one of their challenges for people as they head down the road is that interaction between cars and trucks touching about some of that tension between those two main groups of vehicles on our nation's highways messages they threw through conflict there's clarity into the inner cities was would go forward eyes now say was save lives to build up our economic engines and to defend the world the contrary he was a genius to moving moving which rules especially in the army and his military convoys but just weren't they weren't the all of khrushchev weekend to visit us and use less about how

us are moved through europe all these supplies eyes those about trucking and trucking is really i think the real reason for the energy systems is no commerce the idea was getting in our car during a road trip that's fun that's how most of us see the road and the station wagon with a wooden the sidekick is packed up that's kind of a classic american vision of a road trip my mom had wanted it might add to it and this is the beauty of it but really those trucks are words we're really paying back the bills and the return or investment for the interstate system they are though shoes or eighty thousand pounds that if they pose a great rest to most people in their minds maybe more than in reality they're often driven by buried professional drivers but at eighty thousand pounds a truck one truck passing over bridges the quilt of summit set up to ten twenty thirty thousand cars are cars are very light and cause i'm a slowdown is really troubled the surface the trucks oh quite a burden on the

roads and bridges especially one of the things you delve into it in your book the roads to build a bear attack is something palin must just don't really think much about and that's what our roads are made of the interstate system roads are paved with asphalt talked about how that came to be and to the development of the actual physical part of the roads knew it we we would go low low last great empire to build roads in the fifties and that story with a silk road in china it was the roman road system later the french the germans americans full circle back to nine states that they used almost become a truly can imagine these were often does lines in the desert for the silk road or the romans were famous for building a very deep road it's been those roads still exist to be able to say what the ultimate the romans they'd still be here but they built them out the romans who would have no more stone left on earth are these drugs are so deep so burdensome from financially or burdensome

what we want what we learned later with the national road united states is that we could use shells we could use would we could use breck wicked used car we could use asphalt we could use concrete almost any mature was hard was it was considered a possibility we settle on asphalt it's amazing if you take a chunk of asphalt on the road you're looking at a hundred pound stone on your desk was actually five percent glue that's the asphalt the black stuff and then the ninety five pounds would be still is five percent asphalt ninety five percent stone that is the typical road but the asphalt just it's genius because it flexes it moves its lights it you don't need to go that deep into the earth and maybe more poorly than its flexibility as its waterproof ms yin and roe believes water water water that that is the killer so it's all about drainage trench drainage but at mass paul wrote was a perfect roof over a road back to keep it from from getting damaged was a hole called upon all

of that that will destroy your foundation and that was so costly the potholes that are not treated did your book about the interstate highway system is called the roads that built america as opposed to the roads that america built to shanghai visit citizen because it's a great american story about us all being together and designed to build as if government is what we do together infrastructures will we build together and this roses to really links us but it's once the system was built that was a remarkable achievement has a lot is engineering project in history the world at the time but more remarkably i think the system continues to give aid it excel or aid shipments eight allows precious goods to the ship that has reduced the cost of goods sold every can afford the things that so few could afford the past as their ability to move about that is so all american that has led us interchange socially with each other is it's been a remarkable feature both from an

engineering point of view from a social economic point of view and i think eisenhower knew that he was going to be successful at this city that built but i don't think even he could've been guests at the successes can have by building up our economy one of their things that the highway system really shape in terms of our economy was how it helped create a whole industry of roadside services like holiday and howard johnson's mcdonald's the things that people of my age remember on up on those road trips that there were certain scenes that you could find like howard johnsons that no matter where you were in the country you've got to find one of those talk to me about how those were linked with the building of internet state system is the system really broad all sorts of one of all things and sometimes not so wonderful things to different parts of the country but if you look at the south and it's a great example in the south they were very

limited with with roadside accommodations didn't have an interstate come down to the south men you were on a tobacco road you were you wondering is that the places days and rosa house of food there was the bed like a desoto obvious ace as a rock high paying jobs but belsky health the benefits it brought in a broad civil rights down to the down to the south a courthouse famous for saying you know women whatever trouble we stayed on the initiative because it was safe because the holiday inns would allow black people to stay overnight which was in the case and a lot of the post i was was in the south at the time soon here you have all these wonderful things happening which you have the owners of these big franchises like mcdonald's and holly and flying over the interstates as are being built in the nineteen fifties and sixties say there is going to really be a location to put a hotel there's been a grim place for a restaurant and then now we see huge starbucks signs in alabama say come here

it's just sit alone or that uniformity calms franchises franchises are all about uniformity and because of his pattern going back and forth to the boy know where to seek out originality and the demands of that because i i have a number of friends who don't like to travel on the interstate system because they liked to take the back roads in and find things that are more i was it is the american baby just maybe more unique to a particular region or look how to ruin porn the station because iowa dr munnell cartilage and for non us and all around the country up royally infrastructure and the road system talking about and to do that we have their citizens' gentle so the car could climb easier it was a surprise but that pavement usually the day we peel off of my partner and i we would peel off and who would look for roadside greasy spoons keys those are the fun place to go

that are you really see americana and as you see i can speak to people i'll without that kind of intensity or that rush that you have when you're at a roadside interstate highway pressed up you were your book about the interstate system back into thousand six when it was the fiftieth anniversary of the system update us a bit thin man what kind of challenges do we face today what has the past ten years meant in terms of what our interstate highway system looks like we go home well i came to kansas city a second act of the paper of the past us and tragic as your car flipped over on the side of the road of the tally someone come off for thirty five i believe and in the northern corps you see driverless cars coming another article separate article but the two are linked so when you think about driverless cars or you think oh i think of horses carriages you know seems so strange that his carriage with two what was the what was with a motor areas of your sauna and now we're looking at cars that will drive

themselves or do drive themselves and i think that's the future i think these big roads that we have our land banks putting these big roads are opportunities for other forms of transportation that the road in a car as a great model has been a great model but what will that look like in the future with driverless cars we may need far fewer of them so that to be an eighty percent reduction in some people's opinion about how the causal c on the road because of the swordfish and most was always a car five percent of the time so that coal is costly news you need fewer of them and ride sharing would become common commonplace and it's also can certainly much safer so this week high wages interstate story care utilities or tank trucks and cars assuming what the driver was carson and what the high speed trains running down i'm somewhat the other modes of transportation running underneath them on them above them like drones delivering packages and how did you get interested in the subject of roads and highways but my

dad in the back of a say shelling on summer vacations you know going on and on about the building of the interstate system and what they were all about family road builders so is it was carr says that we we never stopped having an epic a black into this obsession almost manic it does about rove's book really i think what's so exciting about it is always social kerry's always social it's always a social political discussion about what we choose to build away we go why we do it and the roads are remarkable but is that that social and of course it takes place long as rose i think is the most stunning part about the system and how you all kbr the bill that the that great model democracy and if you could change one thing about our hybrid system what would be the use of that i would love to see bikes look i do a lot of biking it fair to everybody when you're a pedestrian you look at the bus was without with very ironed and the cars litter the bus wasn't the dishes or whoever you are there were a given moment bicycles

are the best route that was kind of the beginning of the good roads movement these bicycles are going out for before cars came on the scene in a big way and i just think there's a great opportunity to put bikes along roads years it's one louder first notice aren't allowed and trains and i think if we get a high speed train line between kansas has a louis if we get high speed trains to take up that right of way and the land that was so valuable is that that path that we now have that we should put to better use one of the ways in which our highways are not necessarily uniformly is the use of toll roads on many of our interstate system talk about how the toll roads developed and how they play into accessibility end the use of our roads at the tolls it's a just a it was the bane of the road system at the beginning they were seen as a blockade the commerce because people privately built bridges and then wood couch people to try to get

across the us owes a big movement success one that that obama finally said you know what we're not allow use these structures to be told alone probably know looking at things a bit differently but the short story is when they decide to build inner season in nineteen fifty six some states have or you start to build their interstate system roads all those exact lines it would be designated as the interstate system like pennsylvania famously the granddaddy of turbo x and they said a fairly well we've already paid for our roe who rebuilt it with oil money or elsa getting the roads built by federal money what are we gonna do and the government said we want to keep people's up so you got all those along interstate system which is not allow for tolling except on these puzzle editor bikes these the new york throughway is these these told structures before there's a system the old is new we're going back to a people or raise the gas tax and washington so what we gonna do or salaam were calling and that ownership a private ownership in public spaces such a creep back in and that could

be a good thing it might not be on the road but it's coming and i see cause trucks and tunnels as the future of the interstate system ends fox will be paying their fair share of those have a woman as a lot more electronically which is highly efficient a lot less painful and the solidly with a former assistant in the future of course kansas does have a tower on the campus turnpike at least one person was not happy with the opening of the cancers turnpike tell a story about a ms switzer avis the angry farmers that was probably just a really nice guy but easy has far right in there in oklahoma at the end of the kansas to report the cancer by debt and it into his field and famously white magazine featured him in an article is showing the kansas trip like screaming down through kansas and then become a deuce stop amos suppose we looked up a tractor and carson this about a five hundred a year the rate of five hundred a year and i think was the governor of wyoming is

why for the road tripping down is neil fights did back then the storming down the interstate system is usually the turbot against her bike and they blasted through his parents he had a fish them out of his farm but there was a pervert example of the feds getting involved the road building business and says he likes hometown home state he knew that the states couldn't build these roads together who was oklahoma's i do the bill that turnpike kansas have the mice that one and this is a great ideal stay connected to texas in canada and then kids never thought that oklahoma would get their act together oklahoma never built the road and so we have a dead end of a superhighway going to be streaming hall to earthiness is field and he was in the perfect picture of why we needed to do this on us well it seems like such an obvious thing that we needed this and it's easy in hindsight to say well of course of course we needed an interstate system that at the time was a controversial wildly controversy

all the controversy around the interstate system really stems from people not knowing what they needed or what they want it but no they want to get into that new car with a force like the gas and go somewhere and golf fast and the cause of the time to sweat ready for the most high speeds but as we saw a dazzling teacher but when they open up this autobahn because of the exact model the audubon bird and he will put their cars all are buicks in a chevy zone and there are other cars they were driving at seventy miles an hour in third gear and that will destroy caught very quickly he says but people didn't also know that that by limiting their access to them from the road you have a much more efficient flow farmers will rule my home hausa month bahraini separated they were the victims of progress a satellite but people are so eventually that won the road is much safer divided today to get less access it actually more speed and three you know the idea of these wide roads eisenhower

brilliantly came along at that moment and said no no we're not going to improve the us routes the video but there are limited gray crossing on a curve what we're going to do build a green fuel product meaning a brand new product from the bottom up lay down right next to the existing interstates these big wide roads and instead of the small crew as he did one big improvement people thought understandably that will you're repeating yourself your history or done system but no lawyer but with different than those users know so much more local purpose while there's a serves a true interstate function that's fascinating i mean i knew that you know like anybody that's been so it never occurred to me that like oh that actually that makes sense that there's a redundancy there is getting oil or should be on to you just you have extra bits as when you figure out the flow but for social economic perspective people thought was a crew of free road next to this road it's a tall row another problem and even then you see

an equal split troubles will pay a little more to get going across the state of indiana and maybe will won't take those local roads even though they exist right next to it that our interstate system as bad based on the audubon in germany i don't think that we could learn from highway systems in other countries it's definitely see how weak exchange information either of them are traveling in china and that with chinese officials about the roses and they're building and they were taking the best ideas from the us interstate system and that all made and the best ideas for the audubon and they combine them into what i'm calling the into provincial system is on an interstate system isn't it a provincial system in china thirty provinces being down together with these super highways but like a loaded bomb handbag they have copied our interstate system brilliantly and wonderfully this is the free flow of exchanges full of transportation that kind of mission as it is for them to take him to do leave a better job of i think we can now learn from what they've done with the germans are doing this and improve our system to a whole lot

you thank you so much for talking about this dan mcnichol is the author of the roads that built america the incredible story of the us interstate system we spoke last year at the law and a whole library in kansas city i'm kay mcintyre you're listening to kbr presents on kansas public radio this weekend to peak it is celebrating what would have been the one hundredth birthday of topeka native and pulitzer prize winning poet gwendolyn brooks one of the special guest at brooks fast was elizabeth farnsworth you may know her from public television's newshour where she has reported from cambodia haiti saudi arabia and chili but before she became a globe trotting journalist she was a kansas native farnsworth has written a memoir about her experiences and the way they connect to her childhood in topeka psy talks this week with k pr as laura lorson about her unusual sense of storytelling and how her memoir reflects that i

never really wanted to write a memoir i think of that as journalists we don't want to talk about ourselves at the news hour we really wish we were to shine the spotlight on the person that whose story we were telling so i didn't have any desire to write a memoir but i had this strange experience hour one day it while editing at skywalker ranch outside seven sisko and i started writing everything down that followed from that and it became a book one is i think you start working for the newshour my first heard the news hour was from guatemala nineteen eighty four it aired in nineteen eighty four it actually did in nineteen eighty three but they sat on it for a while and how did you come to be informal i was making a film for kqed i'd started working and eighty three for kqed as a freelance producer and on air correspondent you're originally from topeka i am i left topeka when i went to college i came back in the summer but never really lived into peak again i loved living in topeka but something just took me away i went to stanford graduate school and then my

husband and i got married and we lived in various places ending up in california would you say that being a kansas native informed some of the the stories that you chose to do i think being from kansas says it has a very particular thing and you sort of take that kansas mentality with you when you go if you're from here i think so too i'm glad you asked about that because i think the memoir is a lot about my growing up in topeka it it is in fact partly about a tragedy in my family when i was young and i use the train trip that i took with my father after that to talk about both a tragedy and also to try to explore how that affected my way reporting from dangerous places that it's wider than just the fact that it's about my child i think that with who we are those of this they're from kansas is very much determined by being at cannes and for example i think not wanting to talk about ourselves as fair a cancer and i have various theories for why that's the

case one is a kind of natural modesty that i think is further in kansas but i think whether striking to you know has to do with it too how can you think you're very important reason nonetheless forces of whether this enormous prairie that the unpredictability of what will happen in the weather is always with you and i think it influenced lease it influenced me it's a memoir yet it's not a memoir it's it's got elements of magical realism to it obviously that really appeals to you you you've reported from latin america have to get drawn into that kind of literature and i kind of stored well thank you i mean i i think it's a very strange book i'm surprise anybody wants to read it so strange but fortunately people are wanting to read it i can even explain why for example you have a part of the book where i break into fiction my imagination just took over and i couldn't stop from making up part of it and i am open about that but if you ask

me about magical realism i would've even thought that that was in the book but i think imagination is one way to see the world that is honest in and in many ways and i think it's a way to express reality in a way that the mind and the soul can both take so yeah so like magical realist i think you have to be incredibly grounded in realist real was and to be able to really manage writing in that style yes and actually both garcia marquez and mighty about the show sir they have been journalists and they're also not us in some ways the only way that they could express the debts and the heights of that was to use their imagination to do it that's what gave birth to magical realism in some ways and you're going to this talk in topeka arm say a teenager comes uses all my gosh i wanna tell stores like that too would you tell a kid i tell them to trust imagination i try i tell them if they want to be a journalist i tell them to learn how to rigorously research and report

stories i mean really rigorously i would advise them to learn eight very careful use of language and i would urge this person to let their imagination take over once in a while that's elizabeth farnsworth speaking to k pr as laura lorson fines for its new memoir is called a train through time alive real and imagined she's in topeka this weekend for brooks first i'm kay mcintyre you're listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio a nice bass asking is doing is causing illness many are

i am sorry they may be that too hardest words in the english language and two of the most powerful for the rest of this hour the apology dr harriet lerner of lawrence is one of america's most respected expert on relationships and the best selling author of the dance of anger her latest book is why won't you apologize healing big betrayals and everyday hurts welcome dr lerner i'm delighted to be here you have forty five years as a practicing therapist under your belt why did you think that this book needed to be written the apology is so important because we're all connected we'll screw up where perfect human beings we always will unwittingly hurt people just as we are hurt by them to serve the need to burp given receive apologies is with us to know our very last breath and if

done correctly and a khalid sheikh is deeply healing and if the apology is absent or it's a bad apology and actually can protect a crack in the very foundation of the relationship or you can end the relationship speaking about apologies one of the things you talk about in your book is that it's not enough to just say i'm sorry we have to get it right why is it so hard to get that right because it's so easy to get it wrong you may be we should talk about though the key ways that we mock up the apology because it's where where fat it can help put us on track so the number one offender is the word but i'm sorry i yelled to you but you were looking me right or

i'm sorry that i forgot the meeting but i was totally snowed under with work it doesn't matter if what you say after the bike is true it makes the apology thoughts so get your but how does your have the holiday cheer no pun intended and then another way we ruined apologies which is a little more subtle as we apologize for the other person's reactions rather than for our own behavior on like if i said i'm really sorry that you were upset that i corrected hear stories that the party that's not an apology and so are you feel that way it wasn't my intention to hurt you that's not an apology i'm sorry if i hurt your feeling it right empty apology would be i'm sorry that i corrected your stories at the party you had told me that

you didn't like that i was wrong and i won't do it again and then of course you know here is a very obvious thing but if we apologize with the grand flourish and then we repeat the very thing that we apologize for of course it's totally empty its income and no surprise to any male female couple that there are real gender differences on how or why whether we say i'm sorry i catch myself saying i'm sorry all the time many of my emails start out i'm sorry for the delay getting back to you sorry i missed your call i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry what if that all about well i was you know my generation of women were certainly raced to feel guilty if we were anything less than an emotional service station to

others and guilty for using up valuable oxygen in the room and it is true that one risk factor for being an img or apologize sir is to be raised mail and the greatest risk for being an over apologize there is to be raised female so many women will identify with what you're saying like oh i'm so sorry it you're about to speak it mean to interrupt you and o you're gonna sit here i'm so sorry and and the problem with the endless streams of i'm sorry says that on whatever the cause it's get to tone it down so if you've forgotten to return your friends tupperware don't apologize numerous times as if you've run over her kicking over apologizing creates distance it interrupts the flow of normal conversation it will irritate your

friends who have to stop and reassure you like no no don't worry about it rather than talk about what they want to talk about and i will say though that this sort of over this her bid to offset of self effacing girls thing on this is not it's not at the heart of what we're talking about because when it comes to a real apology for a serious injury and what that demands of us on the demand to really accept responsibility without a hint of inflation or excuse making are blaming the capacity to listen without defensiveness this challenge crosses gender and culture and age and all of the air filters

through which we see reality so it's really a basic human talent my kids are grown now but when they were younger i remember breaking up disputes between them and usually ending with they tell your sister your sorry what's a better way to teach kids how to apologize well there's nothing wrong for asking for an apology and if its narrative so if we think an apology is due this absolutely nothing wrong with saying to our child's you know i'd like you to apologize the problem is that parents do not know how to say thank you for the apology i really appreciate it and stop they are so what parents do that make children absolutely allergic to apologize saying is they say thank you for the apology but i really wish that i didn't have to ask you for three

times or thank you for the apology but i don't feel he's really sincere and you're looking at your feet and you go to your room and you think about how you hurt your brother's feelings and you come back and you have a really genuine apology and i've done the research on this and it makes kids won a stick their fingers in their ears and just get away and it's really interesting how difficult it is for parents to say thank you for the apology i really appreciate it keep in mind this is true for kids or adults the apology isn't the end of the conversation and other words the parent we're talking about can open up the conversation again if there's more they want their child to think about the apology isn't the end of the conversation the apology is what

lower is the intensity and creates an emotional climate that further conversation can occur later and to have you know i always anyone he gets music therapist peggy it's me as say i'm an editor and i always tell people to say it short or because we tend to over talk yanks and down i mean i was certainly guilty of that i remember conversations with my younger son ben i doubt cleaning up the public space and high you were just be lecturing him i would go on a nine and his brain waves would be flat in his eyes which rolling back in his head and even though i didn't have his attention i would keep going so it sounds like a very simple advice to save your

children thank you for the apology nothing more it's actually very difficult it's very difficult not just in your relationships with your children except in apology in a way it's almost like accepting a compliment it can be very hard to just open yourself up to that moment and just accept what the person has to give you hear an example of that is my friend was having a dinner party and one of her friends who she invited and had just come back from a trip around europe and talked endlessly and cc easily about his travels without leaving space for other people and without asking questions to other people and to me and my friend by the way after the dinner party was ever told me how obnoxious she felt this was but when he called her when he had the integrity and maturity and

courage to call her the next day and apologize for being a conversation hike as he put it she said oh no no you know we were all very interested in your stories don't worry about it it was fine and out of her own discomfort in the moment she cancelled the apology that indeed he knew was too and that's why he called to apologize so it can be hard in your book by what you apologize you are away a really powerful story of a woman who accepts an apology from you on an incident involving some an anonymous which i found i finally got to the heart of that can you really that's where it was i was at the airport and this is back when my kids were little and there was a problem with the car rental and a lot of us ended up in the airport floor and i gave a bag of candy and opened a bag of candy for my two little boys

and i saw this little girl next to me looking longingly at it and i simply handled through the open bag and offered it to her and she took a handful and i became slightly uncomfortable because it occurred to me that i hadn't asked her mother and at first i wasn't going to apologize because the mother seemed to have no reaction then time passed it seems silly to apologize but i decided to apologize and i said i'm sorry that i offered your daughter candy without asking you first and i was sure she was going to say don't worry about it it's no big deal it's nothing and instead she looked me in the eye and really held the connection and said in a very present way

thank you for the apology i really appreciate it and what she didn't do was equally as important she didn't lecture me she didn't say don't you know that your boys a dirty have considered on the floor and then in the candy she didn't say you know my child could been diabetic i mean all of these things are true and it was the simplicity and her grace of simply saying thank you for the apology i appreciate it that really made me realize that i did have something to apologize for and also became my my role model but i try to teach parents out of town to accept an apology in that way dr lerner in your book why why you apologize you gave two pieces of advice that really stuck with me the first say it's shorter you've heard about wright's a sackett was

your apology is not about you write a real apology is not a real apology is q suits that hurt party it's touche it's to help the hurt party feels safe and soothed in the relationship again and to let them know that we care about their feelings and that which were capable of taking responsibility for what we've said or done or not said or done it's not about getting something back like forgiveness although we might hope for that end it's not about lowering their own guilt quotient hobo that happens and it's not something that we're only going to do if the other person and set to their part because of weave apologize for our forty percent then

they should really apologize for their sixty percent that's not what an apology is about it's about the eu take unequivocal clear responsibility for your own behavior because you that that is the highest ground that you can stand on even if the other person is defensive about their part dr harriet lerner is the author of why won't you apologize healing big betrayals and everyday hurts dr lerner thanks for coming in today thank you i'm came out entire k pr press them if the production of campo public radio university of those pieces now

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