[MUSIC] I'm Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

And I'm so honored and touched that one of America's most legendary broadcasters and my friend, Judy Woodruff, a mentor in the profession, agreed to interview me on the occasion of The Open Mind's 70th anniversary.

And I'm so delighted to see you, Judy.

It's been a while.

Thank you for doing this.

I'm delighted to do it.

Honor that you asked.

And congratulations, 70 years of the open mind, my goodness.

- I've been called the Benjamin Button of public broadcasting because of course, I can't take credit for all that time, but I can for the last 12 and change.

- So tell us about, remind us about the beginning, the very beginning of the program.

- So shortly after TV was invented, my granddad who had been on the radio, who'd been studying and teaching history in New York and California, a few other places, decided to start a program called The Open Mind to explore ideas.

And initially it was on the NBC affiliate in New York.

Later it became part of the beginning of the public media infrastructure on WGBH, WTTW, and of course WNET and WETA here later on.

But his idea was just to present ideas in the public interest.

And that's why it's not a mistake, although it's incredible, that in 1957, one year after starting the Open Mind, he hosts this little-known preacher, Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr., for what was his first ever, and no one has corrected me, television interview on the Open Mind.

And it's extraordinary.

I mean, I was a little boy going around town telling people, "Did you know my grandfather interviewed Martin Luther King Jr.?"

Because even as a boy, I sensed the resonance of that interview, what was being communicated, the advancement of civil rights, the necessity of human rights in America that hadn't been achieved yet.

Later on, as I'm now 36, I got to sense the maturity of the discourse and the articulateness of King and what it all meant.

But that began the open mind's pursuit of ideas in the public arena.

That's really something.

And remind us, what was your grandfather doing at the time?

He was, he had another career.

As a historian.

So he had not been established at one university yet, but soon thereafter he became a longtime professor of history at Rutgers in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

But he spent a lot of time kind of being a freelance historian professor working with a variety of American historians at the University of California system, Sarah Lawrence, and ultimately Rutgers.

But he was doing kind of what I did coming out of school, as you know, because you were right there as one of my mentors.

He was writing columns, he was researching history, and he was on the radio.

So he did a program on the radio out of New York, which was kind of his first journalism job that was looking at the influence of history in contemporary affairs.

And he, I mean, it was his idea that these were things that were not being talked about enough, covered enough, discussed enough out in public.

That was, I think, his concern.

When Newt Minow, his friend, the late Newt Minow, the first chairman of the FCC, gave his landmark speech about worrying that the media was going to become a vast wasteland, I think that was my grandfather's concern.

He wanted there to be a focus on ideas with historical context and the preservation of nuance in our discussions.

But he also, I think, was daring and wanting to invite discussions of issues that were not happening on TV, but they weren't also necessarily happening in the living room or dining room of American homes, on civil rights, for example, or gay rights or pornography.

So, I mean, in the '60s and '70s, he was talking about these things that were somewhat taboo.

And fortunately, he had the freedom to do so.

I mean, there was not an FCC chairman who was saying no.

In the beginning, that's right.

And there was not a governor of New York State or a president of the United States.

And I mean, that's the blessing of what we've had is the free and open airwaves that at least so far in the duration of both of our careers, you know, we've had editorial obligations at times to comply with standards and timeliness of news, but we've had an open press.

And he was working within that culture that he could bring King on in 1957, and no one else did.

So Martin Luther King was extraordinary that he talked to him in 1957.

Right.

Who are some of the other figures your grandfather talked to?

Well, the most frequent guest of the open mind during his tenure was Elie Wiesel, and I think it was the other end of the spectrum of the same issue of human rights.

And I think that he felt as though his job was to preserve the history that Wiesel shared in Knight and being a survivor and being concerned that the memory of the Holocaust was being erased slowly.

So I think, you know, one of the things that's most encouraging about his exchanges with Wiesel was Wiesel, despite what he witnessed, was fundamentally optimistic about the human spirit.

I mean, he still believed in the constructive potential of our human morality to overcome the destructive characteristics.

And so that to me is just something I watch from time to time to be encouraged.

Here's someone who suffered through as a child.

Also, Dr.

Ruth was a guest of The Open Mind many times.

Both people, survivors of the Nazi regime, and came to experience life and freedom and you know, the kind of America that we aspire to, where life, liberty, and happiness is not just something we read on July 4th, but we're doing it.

And you know, no one was quite like Ellie or Dr.

Ruth in expressing those freedoms on the air.

And this was when your grandfather started.

This was a very short time after the end of World War II.

We're talking a decade or two decades or so when people were still alive with fresh memories of what awful things had happened.

- Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

And Franklin Roosevelt was more of a real life figure.

He wasn't in the history books.

And I think a lot of my grandfather's worldview emanated from Lincoln and Roosevelt.

I mean, he saw the potential of the better angels, and he definitely believed that FDR manifested that in a way that saved the country, both against the Axis powers, but also, you know, against the FDR's mandate, freedom from want, wanting people to be able to be fed and have roofs under their head and engage in civil society.

So much of what my grandfather observed in the last, I'd say, 25 years of doing the Open Mind was what he called the Reagan revolution.

Reagan, you could say, Reagan, Bush, Trump revolution.

But the interesting thing is that there has not been an oppositional figure in the Democratic Party who's had an agenda like FDR since probably LBJ.

But then you look at the Democrats who've run since then, they have not brought the same commitment to the government as a force for good.

They had to shy away from it.

They've been afraid to express that agenda.

And I think that, you know, he felt very much that he may have misread the idea of the Roosevelt years being a permanent change for the country.

And how could he have foreseen that the country would be where it is today all these years later?

I mean, generally, political scientists describe us as a set-or-right country right now.

Absolutely.

I mean, I think that that's true.

I think he knew that, but I think he didn't want to necessarily accept that the boyhood aspirations of FDR and the New Deal had disappeared.

And also, I think, you know, he felt connected to the second New Deal of LBJ in the sense that he felt as though that was not just aspiring to secure the blessings of liberty for formerly enslaved people, but he thought that they were going to endure.

And we're watching kind of the slow-motion demolition of a lot of those programs that either began in FDR's time or LBJ's time.

But one of the things that I'm going to try to talk about in the 70th year of the Open Mind is what AI means for our economy and the displacement of our economic vitality.

Because I think that there is a consensus that transcends partisanship that things are not going to be the same, and that people may be out of work.

A lot of people may be out of work.

What do we do about it?

And so I don't know that FDR has the lessons from his administration to address that problem, but one of the things that interests me is this idea of Social Security on the front end.

Like, everybody thinks about Social Security as for retirees.

At the end of your life.

So, you know, I've been fortunate in the last few years to interview a lot of elected officials for specials that I've done that are more documentary style.

That's the first time the open mind went in that direction.

One of the proposals is from Senator Booker of New Jersey, and it's for baby bonds.

This idea that you should start your life with some basic level of nutrition and education and the... Rather than waiting until retirement.

Right.

Yeah.

So that's given me hope to see people imaginatively conceiving of these ideas that haven't been part of the discourse.

I think you're almost answering the question here, Alexander, but what do you think your grandfather would have thought of the Trump era, of President Trump?

He would have thought it was entirely predictable.

While he was wrong about the New Deal being sustainable, he was right.

Another one of his favorite guests was Neil Postman, the NYU Media Scholar who wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death.

And so I think he saw the writing on the wall when it came to exploiting the medium and media of new technology to advance a mission even if it lacks facts or integrity, and for this to be one big Hollywood show.

I mean, I think he's very happily six feet under and not observing the entertainment culture taking over intelligent and intellectual discourse.

I mean, this was sort of not your grandfather's media age.

But he'd think it's America.

I mean, he'd think - I don't know if he ever invited President Trump on the open mind.

He probably did.

I mean, he invited everybody.

He had most of - And he was in New York.

He had almost every New York City mayor on the show.

And his mind was always open.

And he entertained Milton Friedman and Paul Krugman, everyone in between.

That's kind of the intellectual missing piece of Donald Trump.

The story that hasn't been told about Donald Trump that I think will by historians is that he had an opportunity to be a peacemaker in the political process.

"I alone can fix it," is what he said in 2016.

And he had a point.

I mean, his point was that, "Here I am writing checks to Speaker Pelosi and to Senator McConnell.

Here I am funding the vast industrial lobbying complex in which Washington politics gets sucked.

And if I can have an independent spirit a la Ross Perot and not be driven just by the radical extremes, then maybe I can fix things.

And I just wonder, this keeps me up at night, Judy, this idea of, it's similar to President Obama, because you heard a lot of chatter that he didn't engage Republicans in the way that he described in his vision of a post-partisan America.

I think he did do some earnest work along those lines, but maybe not as much as he could have with Trump.

I really want to know if Senator Schumer said to him, look, you're our guy.

You're from New York.

You wanted to run as a reform candidate.

You wanted to run as a Democrat.

Roger Stone gave you the hardware to run as a Republican.

But you don't have to talk about these things that divide us anymore.

And maybe someone like Senator Schumer or Senator McConnell took him aside and said that.

But I don't know.

I'd like that history to be written because he likes nothing more than just to be approved of.

He claims that the polls that show him with 30% approval rating are not true.

He said he has his highest marks ever and he could have actually had high marks.

I mean, that's one of these sad counterfactuals Have you come across, Alexander, anyone in your years?

You've been hosting this program for how many years now?

Twelve and change.

Twelve and a little bit more.

Have you come across anyone who you think is capable, from the perspective of your younger generation, you're 36 years old, of uniting the country?

What a great question.

May I pause for a moment?

I mean, I love doing this, playing this role with tables turned because I like when my guests think about... Well, it's great for me, too.

I'd rather ask questions than answer.

You're the consummate natural in that department.

But it's that type of question that I love on The Open Mind, to see someone think.

They're not sure what they're going to say.

In a world that's so premeditated and scripted, even on social media, it gives you the impression it's authentic, but really it's not.

So I have to think, and I'm thinking, I just concluded interviewing mayors across America and the world.

There were three American mayors, and I would say the mayor of Atlanta inspired me a great deal.

I mean, we hear a lot about the mayor of New York City, Mamdani, but Mayor Andre Dickens, who you'll hear in the airport if you're passing through, on the loudspeaker, he has a message.

I've heard him on the train going to the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport.

He's got a soulful demeanor.

It calms you when you're in that manic airport.

And also, when I spent time with him, I felt he was genuine.

Look, all these mayors that I interviewed, the mayor of Athens was talking about Mamdani and TikTok and the revolution of communications culture.

That's an interesting case study too because Mayor Doukas was kind of like the Tea Party type person in the sense that he was a total outsider, an engineering professor.

This is Athens, Greece.

Athens, Greece.

Not Athens, Georgia.

Right, right.

So two Georgias.

But to your question, who's capable of uniting maybe multiple generations?

You asked me specifically about millennials and then probably our successors of Gen Z. Part of it is having the kind of AOC and Mamdani star power, but here's where the rubber meets the road is having the policies to back it up and to have proof of concept.

So when I was with Mayor Dickens in Atlanta for the Mayors of the World series, when I was with him, he brought me to the site of this housing development.

He used these shipment containers, these huge shipment containers that were vacant, having been used in the early emergency stage of the pandemic, and converted them into housing, not temporary shelter, permanent housing for people.

One of the things that was consistent with my interviews across continents and countries was whether conservative or liberal, these mayors felt like housing, if not a fundamental right, was fundamental to civil society and the perpetuation of that.

And so if someone can combine the glamour of AOC and Mamdani with the hard-nosed policies that are going to help people, I think that's the strategy.

That's what can work.

And we know the cost of housing, cost of living, but the cost of housing is one of those factors that's making so many of your generation and younger, as you say, who are worried about whether the future for them is going to be anything like what it was for their parents, their grandparents.

Do you feel, let me ask you, do you feel, what does the future look like to you?

Well, I'm in that group of kind of perpetual renters.

I think that it's a mistake when I hear these candidates talk about home ownership as the be-all and end-all of kind of American economic vitality.

And that's a signal, because people are buying homes later on.

I mean, I think it's multifaceted.

There's a piece that I wrote in the Chicago Tribune this summer that is focused on the idea that we need to reconceive of this universal basic income.

It's not purely about income, it's about vitality.

And that's healthcare, that's housing, that's the spirit of your community, whether it's safe and you can have resources for your kids.

So I mean, one of the reasons that I think we pay our taxes every year and hold our nose instead of engaging in representative democracy is because Americans are having fewer kids.

They're less connected to the school system and municipal issues don't matter quite as much.

I mean, if there's an E. coli outbreak in your water, you're going to start paying attention and then maybe you'll end up at a town hall meeting or a meeting of the city council.

But I think that as that older millennial perspective, the future of policymaking has to be multifaceted in looking at the concerns of this generation, not strictly about we're going to tie you down to a mortgage because home ownership, it's not ownership for a lot of people.

It's being a slave to a mortgage that you may or may not be able to pay off in your lifetime.

And that's not, it doesn't feel like freedom.

So when you get caught in that discussion, I think you're, you're, you're going to be lost.

If you're, if you're a Democrat running for office in 2028, and you're only talking about home ownership, it's missing the point.

We have to feel like we belong in that representative democracy.

And I always encourage young people, you know I've been doing this since I was 17, and I asked you to join the advisory board of a website that was students covering the 2008 presidential election, and you kindly did.

You were in school.

Yeah, I was in school, and you're anchoring the NewsHour, and I asked you to advise all these student journalists who are 300-plus reporting on the 2008 election.

So there is that mystique of that moment, which has not been recaptured in many years, of feeling empowered.

And it's not an ideological thing.

I mean, if you ask those of us around politics in 2008, it was John McCain doing the ultimate sacrifice of telling the truth at his own rally and disadvantaging his own political fortunes by... When he spoke up for the woman who... Exactly.

When he corrected his supporter who wanted to call President Obama something that it was not.

Not non-citizen or a Muslim.

So that whole spirit of telling the truth has utterly vanished in American political life.

And you have people who are trying to do Trump with their own kind of bravado and voice, namely Governor Newsom of California.

So to think about issues of concern to young people today, I think you have to make it tangibly relevant in their lives.

And so what I see for young people's potential is not town hall meetings, but citizen assemblies.

One of the things I learned when I went to Lisbon and spoke with the mayor there in Portugal was he was inviting people to city hall to have these citizen assembly meetings where, like jury duty, he'd invite a subsection of people, whoever accepts the invitation comes, to discuss issues.

But you can actually have legislative power behind something like a citizen assembly.

So we always think about a constitutional convention as like the only form of real change that's going to bring back the power of the people and install the voices of the everyday person.

But there are mechanisms for doing that at the local and state level.

I mean, participatory budgeting is one of them, and citizen assemblies is another.

And I, when you hear Gen Z talk about their powerlessness, and that's different from millennials.

I mean, Gen Z has felt a powerlessness that I did not discern going around the country covering the youth vote, being 18 and 20 in 2008.

I never discerned that powerlessness.

So if you can bring millennials and Gen Z and their successor into the process with real mechanisms to make political change, then I think that that's the most important thing we can be encouraging.

We hear a lot of conversation right now about the next generation or the next iteration of politics is going to bubble up from the local level, the grassroots level.

You have been talking to mayors, as you said, all over the world.

Is that what you're finding?

I mean, because we've been so focused on Washington in this country and on the national capitals around the world, the London's and Paris and Beijing and so on.

Do you think local leaders can make the leap?

I think so.

Yeah, I think they will.

I mean, I think that there's an opportunity for them to coalesce, form some kind of coalition in subsequent election cycles.

I don't know if it's a new party or something, but the main thing is, admittedly, some of these mayors are still nibbling around the edges of what are systemic problems.

So I'll just give you a few examples that come to mind quickly.

In Toronto, Mayor Olivia Chow did something that Mamdani wants to do in New York City, which is a vacancy tax for all of these, to go back to the housing issue, all these properties that are just sitting dormant.

No one's living in them, the owners are not using them.

And the city picked up a fair amount, I think in totality it'll be close to a billion, in revenue through the process of this vacancy tax.

That's one example I mentioned, the example in Atlanta.

But there's something else.

You've done this terrific series on NewsHour about America at a crossroads and overcoming our gridlock and divisiveness in the culture.

I could think of nothing more spiritually appealing than the mayor of Santiago, Chile.

So this is a boy who grew up with a mom who wanted Allende's head on a platter, just like Pinochet.

And that was on a platter.

I mean, we could say this so many years later, he was assassinated in the coup d'etat.

He was killed, Allende, the left leader in their house.

The dad had been a huge liberal.

I mean, he was, he was a supportive Allende.

So in their living room hung portraits of both Allende and Pinochet.

And I didn't get to ask him if that lasted throughout the duration of the Pinochet regime.

But it's interesting, Judy, because he's a cop.

He's a cop that came to see the light.

And he didn't think of his enforcement of the law as politicized, even as Pinochet was disappearing civilians.

And it's that kind of spirit when he can take me to his version of one police plaza in Chile, and we're there looking at all the monitors of trying to keep the city safe.

And he can do it in a way that's not derogatory.

It's not castigating liberals or conservatives.

We want to keep the city safe.

And as we wrap up, Alexander, do you think it's possible?

We've got, what, two and a half years to go as you and I sit here before the next presidential election in this country.

Do you see us coming together as a country or continuing in the vein that we are right now?

There's so many institutions that give us permission to do the opposite, that incentivize the opposite.

I don't know if it's a two years kind of thing.

I mean, you know, you have a Supreme Court that that gives permission for states to do these kind of radical gerrymandering so no one will ever hear a different perspective in their congressional district.

It's tough.

It's really tough out there.

Mayors can be a solution.

And then taking the civic energy and saying, I want to do it at the front end, again, like social security at the front end.

I don't want to be responding to a Parkland massacre in Florida.

I want to be a young person who's engaging in the process.

Now that's the only way you fix things.

- Well, Alexander, as you look ahead to the next 70 years of this program, you bring energy and enthusiasm and optimism, and I know your grandfather would be proud.

- Thank you, Judy.

Such an honor to be with you today.

- It's great to have this conversation.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Please visit the Open Mind website at thirteen.org/openmind.

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Continuing production of The Open Mind has been made possible by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Angelson Family Foundation, Robert and Kate Niehaus, Robert S. Kaplan Foundation, Grateful American Foundation, Draper Foundation, and Lawrence B. Benenson.

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