Deborah and James Fallows are experienced, accomplished journalists who have influenced culture through their insights on politics, foreign affairs, and life in America.
Together, the Fallows wrote Our Towns, a best-selling book that was published in 2018. Our Towns describes how they spent four years traveling 100,000 miles in their single-engine plane.
The couple reported from dozens of cities and towns across America, and their book celebrates how these communities are successfully navigating the socio-economic challenges in America in the 21st century.
In this episode, Deb and Jim talk about their life story and share some of the defining attributes of cities and towns that are on the rise.
They also share observations from their visits to Muncie and why they believe Ball State’s partnership with Muncie Community Schools is “unprecedented in modern American history.”
If you enjoy this episode, please leave a review to support the show.
Deborah and James Fallows are experienced, accomplished journalists who have influenced culture through their insights on politics, foreign affairs, and life in America.
Together, the Fallows wrote Our Towns, a best-selling book that was published in 2018. Our Towns describes how they spent four years traveling 100,000 miles in their single-engine plane.
The couple reported from dozens of cities and towns across America, and their book celebrates how these communities are successfully navigating the socio-economic challenges in America in the 21st century.
In this episode, Deb and Jim talk about their life story and share some of the defining attributes of cities and towns that are on the rise.
They also share observations from their visits to Muncie and why they believe Ball State’s partnership with Muncie Community Schools is “unprecedented in modern American history.”
If you enjoy this episode, please leave a review to support the show.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Hello and welcome back to our Call to Beneficence. For the first time, I'm welcoming two guests to the podcast today, Deborah and James Fallows. Deb and Jim are veteran journalists with excellent academic credentials and extraordinary professional experience. Both of them earned their bachelor's degrees from Harvard University. Deb also earned a PhD in linguistics, and Jim studied economics at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Deb has written for major publications including the Atlantic, National Geographic, Slate and the New York Times. Her book, Dreaming in Chinese, chronicles her experiences living in China and learning how to speak Mandarin Chinese. Jim is a journalist who has served for many years as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. One of his books, National Defense, received the National Book Award. He was also President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter for two years. Together, Jim and Deb wrote the book, Our Towns, which was published in 2018.
Our Towns describes how they spent four years traveling 100,000 miles in their single-engine plane. They reported from dozens of cities and towns all across America. And their book celebrates how these cities are successfully navigating the socioeconomic challenges in America in the 21st century. In 2019, I invited the Fallows to Muncie to see what we were doing in our own community. Since their visit, Jim and Deb have written several articles promoting our university's innovative partnership with the Muncie Community Schools.
Jim and Deb returned to campus earlier this month to address our class of 2022 at our Spring commencement ceremony. At the May 7th ceremony, they also received honorary degrees. We recorded this conversation during their visit. I'm grateful for this opportunity to reconnect them and to introduce them to my listeners. Deb and Jim, welcome back to Ball State. And thank you for joining me in the studio.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
Mr. President, it's a great honor and pleasure.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Well, thank you very much. So let me start off with how we cover this episode. You know, the two of you have led interesting lives. But let's start first with the story of how the two of you met. Deb, do you want to start?
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Sure. It's kind of a classic embarrassing story. We were at college. I was a freshman, and Jim was a sophomore. And we met on a blind date. Just a blind date, you know. "My boyfriend is having a party. Anybody needed a date? Anybody want to go?" And fortunately, I said, "Yeah, I'll show up." And it was Jim. And that was the beginning of everything. So it was very good luck because I think we never would have met otherwise. We were in different circles.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
It was, of course, good luck, especially for me. We were both 18. We've been together ever since then. We got married at age 21, which was 50 years ago. We had our 50th anniversary. And the part of the story that Deb is not telling mercifully, though, she'll sort of give me the needle later on, is I was hours' late for this first day, because I was starting to work on the student newspaper. There was a big story. I kept saying, well, I'll be there. But you didn't tell that story.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
I didn't tell that story. It's been so long now that I think I'm over it.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
It's probably one that stays repeated from time to time during the course of your lives and careers together.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
It was good training.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So you both grew up in middle class households. Why don't we talk about how you grew up, where you grew up? Deb, do you want to start us off?
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Sure. I was—I grew up not too far from here. Same kind of culture. Vermillion, Ohio. It's on Lake Erie. It was a fishing town and also farming town between Cleveland and Toledo, between Lorraine and Sandusky, even smaller, between the Ford plant and the GM plant. It was a wonderful place to grow up. Lots of watersports. But like probably—anybody listening to this might recognize when you grow up in the Midwest, you want to see more of the world. So that was kind of the beginning of our travels. But that was my upbringing.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And Jim, you spent some of your childhood in Redlands, California, which is one of the cities, many years later, you and Deb visited when you were preparing to write Our Towns. Tell us about growing up in Redlands.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
So Redlands is a small town. Most listeners might note if they ever have driven from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, Redlands is one of the towns you would go through. And so it was a place that had the goods and bad—the goods and the challenges of small town American life.
The goods were that my parents, who had both grown up in sort of working-class Philadelphia, came to California during the Korean War to raise their family there for new opportunities. And there was a sense of people starting over in a new place. The town then had about 30,000 people. It was mainly an orange-growing town. My dad was a small town doctor. The challenge is it's from a part of California that is not stylish. It's from the part of California that people in Los Angeles would think, oh, that's flyover California. And so it also gave people there a sense of well, we want to show you what we can do from our little town. And so I've always felt as if that's where I am from, as you were always from Ohio.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Right.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And it probably prompted you, as we'll talk about later, to explore the country, the smaller cities and the towns all across our country. So you mentioned a moment ago, Jim, that while you were at Harvard, you worked for the Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper. How did you get involved with the Crimson? How did you discover a lifetime love for journalism?
[JIM FALLOWS]:
I got involved purely by chance. It was even more of a chance than the great good fortune of meeting Deb at about the same time. I got into college assuming I was going to be a doctor. My dad had gotten—the Navy sent him to medical school. He was a beloved small town doctor. I always liked scientists. I thought this is what I'll do, too. So I was enrolled in all these premed courses, which I enjoyed. But I was trying to save money for medical school by being an advertising salesman on the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson.
And one time in the dead of winter, in I guess January of my freshman year, when it was the coldest weather I'd ever seen in my entire life, I was the only person in the newspaper office because all the people doing the editorial work were cramming for their exams. And there was an alarm that went off, a fire alarm that went off. And it turned out—the short version of the story is that the Harvard Economics Department was burning to the ground. And you can have many reactions to that news. That was happening. I went out there. And what struck me is the fire trucks could not put out the fire because it was so cold. The water froze in the air. And this was interesting. And I also saw a guy in a turbin who was sobbing because his 14 years of book research was in that building being burned up. And so I got to do my first ever newspaper story asking this guy, how does it feel to have your 14 years' worth of book research burning up? And I -- that was published in the Harvard Crimson, my first entry into journalism. His name was Subramanian Swamy. He became finance minister of India after that. You know, so it was a sort of bump in life's road for him. But by chance, I got just more and more involved in the newspaper. It was a time of great political involvement. I became the editor of the Crimson and just thought, this is what I'd like to try.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
And for context, this was pre-internet, pre put your stuff in the cloud. So when it burned up, it really burned up. It was gone.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
These were notes and drafts that were on pieces of paper.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Exactly.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So Deb, when you were at Harvard, you also discovered your passion, your passion for linguistics. Tell us, really, what linguistics is. What does that field of study entail?
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Linguistics is -- it is, first of all, the perfect intersection between Humanities and Sciences, because you're dealing with language. And you're doing it in a very rigorous kind of rule written way. Categorization, trying to make sense of things, like an architect would draw them. So that, to me, was very interesting. And I had never heard about it before and just kind of wandered into it accidentally. But for me, it worked. And it's -- you can think of it as if anthropology is to humankind, linguistics is to language, studying and talking and thinking about it in the same kind of analytical terms or categorical terms or historical terms to make sense of language.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So after the two of you graduated from Harvard, a year apart, I believe, Jim, your first year out of Harvard, you were a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, as I mentioned. And Deb, I think you took a little detour. You got married around that time, and then you came back to the United States. And Deb, you decided to pursue a doctorate in linguistics. What kind of conversation—maybe I'll start with you, Deb. And you can both tell your sides of the story. What kind of conversations did the two of you have about prioritizing your career at that time? What was that conversation like? What was the reasons for your decision?
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Well, we had come back from England. And we were in Washington, DC. Jim was starting his journalism career. And I will just say I was pretty unhappy in Washington, DC. I'm not a political creature. It was just not my kind of town. What prompted it, perhaps, was when I would start crying, saying, "This is not the place for me."
[JIM FALLOWS]:
You went to Belgium for a month or two. Remember that?
[DEB FALLOWS]:
I did. Yeah. Get me out of here. Right. There's always been a push-pull factor in Washington. So I was -- I had little starter jobs, and they just weren't working out. And I started thinking about what did I really like? And it was back to languages. It was back to linguistics. So that was the, okay, we've been here for a while. How about a change? And, you know, these days it was—it would probably be the norm. Back then it was a magnanimous gesture, Jim.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
So sincere.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Yes. So we went around the country, actually, and looked for a few places. And we hit Austin, Texas, which has a great linguistics department at University of Texas and thought this is the place. It's culturally interesting. Jim found some things to do there that also seemed interesting. And that's where we landed.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So from your perspective, Jim, tell us about how you went through that decision-making process because you had to take a detour in terms of the path that you were on at the time.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
So it was, again, in retrospect, enormously consequential in a positive way that -- I'm going to pause for a -- an allergy-induced cough for a moment. So the -- I guess at that point, it was what sort of set us on the road of being permanently peripatetic. As you mentioned earlier, I grew up in small town Inland Southern California. By chance, I ended up being at Harvard as opposed to going to a California College for college. Met Deb there. I was in Oxford for graduate school. Deb and I got married there. We went for our honeymoon to a work camp in Ghana. We spent our first two months of our married life on a work crew in Ghana.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Not a good decision.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Not the best honeymoon there.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
It built character. Then we came back. We came back to DC. And I thought, well, give journalism a try. Worked for two years in the Washington Monthly, which declared Chapter 11 Bankruptcy the day after I signed on. But it still is going now. And it was going then. And I was really enjoying that and thought, gee, maybe it'd be time to stay in East Coast mainstream journalism, work for The Washington Post, work for the New York Times. But it was clear that we -- that Deb needed to do -- that if we did -- if I did that, probably, we would not be on the long road together.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Or at least not happily.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
Not happily, which would be the same thing. And so we went to Texas, and which I pouted out about a little. But it was --
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Not much.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
Worked for Texas Monthly, which was just starting. I worked in the Texas State Senate as a legislative assistant to a guy named Lloyd Doggett, who's now -- was an established Congressman, eventually joined the Jimmy Carter campaign, saw 200 of Texas's 200 plus counties in reporting. So it was a great adventure and sort of started us on the permanent migration road.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
It opened up a different opportunity for you and in your interest. How did you get on the radar of Jimmy Carter when he was a candidate for president? And then you ended up with a pretty good job after he was elected president.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
Again, it was mainly by chance and the fact -- one reality. So I was -- we were 25, 26 then when Deb was in graduate school. We were just starting to have children, although we didn't know it at the time. And it was -- it's not unusual for people of that age to be working on presidential campaigns in the primaries because when you think about it, most primary candidates lose. And so of the 20 or so people in a field, all but one are going to lose. And so it's these young people with nothing themselves to lose who sign on. So I had friends of friends who said, "Carter is getting some traction." This was in the spring of '76. I'd written some things in the Washington Monthly, more or less favorable about him. And so they said, "Well, you know, we need some more manpower. You want to try running his speeches?" And I had done things like that. You know, speech writing is something that's either easy for you or it's not. And it's something that I found easy. And I learned about the glamour of campaign life. When I got the Carter campaign headquarters --
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
I assume glamor is said with a little bit of sarcasm.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
Or you can judge for yourself when the first thing I had to write in Atlanta headquarters was for the NRA magazine with the title, "My First Kill." It was about Jimmy Carter's memoirs of shooting I can't either remember whether it's a raccoon --
[DEB FALLOWS]:
A rabbit, was it?
[JIM FALLOWS]:
-- or possum. Rabbit or raccoon or possum in the Georgia woods.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Lofty rhetoric, I'm sure.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
Yes. So -- anyhow -- but I stayed with him in the first two years of the administration.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And so you were his chief speechwriter at that time. And am I understanding correctly that you were the youngest person, at least at that time, to ever hold that position?
[JIM FALLOWS]:
At that time and forever after, too. This guy, Jon Favreau, for Obama, he was four months older than I was at the same time. Not that I would notice that.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So what was it like to be at that age in the White House?
[JIM FALLOWS]:
It was a fabulous thing to have done. And there are things -- I think anybody in journalism should work in politics once if they can, because there's things you'll learn by doing it once you can't learn otherwise. But you don't want to do it more than once so you're not sort of commuting back and forth between these roles. I think Carter is not recognized as one of the great orators ever in presidential life, but he's one of the good people ever to have heard that job -- held that job. So it was enormously instructive. And it taught me that what I really wanted to do was to have a lot of control over something small, namely my own writing, rather than a small part in something large. That is, you know, a Presidential's rhetoric. But I was glad to have done it. And I didn't seem glad at the time, though, right?
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Well, I mean, I think we had a sense that it was exciting when you had time, because it was 24 hours a day, on demand.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Seven days a week.
So then you both transition to writing articles, again, for the Washington Monthly, if I understand the chronology. And both of you were publishing articles at that time. Jim, you wrote articles about military service in the Vietnam War, which is certainly a topic of great interest. Can you tell us a little bit about one of the articles that got a lot of attention?
[JIM FALLOWS]:
Sure. One of -- the piece I did in the summer of 1975, I believe, was called What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy? And it was essentially about the secret of the Vietnam War that everybody knew, but there was almost no attention to, which was the fact that -- of who was fighting the Vietnam War. And I had as the opening scene at the day when I was graduating from Harvard, planning to go off to Oxford, and they had the draft physicals for everybody at the Boston Navy Yard. And they did it by -- alphabetically by draft board. So the Cambridge draft board was all students from Harvard and MIT, all of whom had an excuse. I was too skinny. Somebody else was too fat. Somebody else had asthma. Somebody else was mentally unstable. After us came the Chelsea draft board, which is White working class, Boston, South Boston. And they all were going into the military. And the argument there, I was making, is that everybody knows this, and simply people didn't discuss it. And this was the ongoing, undiscussed, class war burden of military service, which Nixon tried to get rid of, tried to reduce as a political problem with the Volunteer Army and all of the things. That was the point of that story, which got a lot of attention.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And not withstanding now that we have a volunteer army, that class division continues to exist, not entirely, but it is predominantly the young women and young men who choose to serve or those who may not have other opportunities.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
And just, you know, not to filibuster on this, it's the -- professional military now is actually relatively well educated. And, you know, it is regionally concentrated much more from the south and smaller town America than other things. The main thing about it is how small it is. All American troop members of any service who have been -- who have served at any point in either Iraq or Afghanistan total are less than 1% of the US population. So the country is always at war, and only 1% of the country is at war. And that is a problem for democracy.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So Deb, let's -- I want to shift to an article that you wrote that grew into a book called A Mother's Work. In that book, you described your decision to become a stay-at-home mother after the birth of your two sons. Did you have something -- what was your goal in writing that book? And do you think you accomplish what you set out to achieve?
[DEB FALLOWS]:
So we'll time travel backwards to the early 1980s when the -- this -- the social discussion was for women, if you're just smart enough, strong enough, good enough, you should be able to have kids and have a job at the same time, no problem. And if you can't do that, there must be something wrong with you. It was post Betty Friedan, just actually very newly post Betty Friedan. So that was the progressive message. And I thought, why do I not believe this? What is wrong with this argument from my point of view? We had two little tiny kids. And I had left my job because I thought, I just can't do this anymore. I'm not happy doing -- being a mother, the way I am, just kind of flying in and out and not being there with the kids. And what is wrong with me that I don't fit in with a message of the times that I can't do this? So really writing that article at the Washington Monthly, which was called the Myth of the Superwoman, the Myth of the Superman, grew into a book called The Mother's Work. And it was really my way of working through this decision for myself. Like, whatever the culture is telling me, I have to figure this out and work it out myself. Of why it's important to me to, at this point in my life, do what I wanted to do, which was being primarily, mostly always, at home with the kids for a period of time. So that's why I wrote the book. It's not very -- a very romantic idea. It was just a utilitarian idea in a way that I had to figure this out. And, you know, anybody who has written papers knows that you kind of can't cheat with your thinking that way. You have to get the arguments out there. So was it successful? For me it was successful because I worked through it. Also, in the time, it was a very polarizing book. I got a lot of very positive attention. But I got a tremendous amount of blowback for saying you're just putting women, you know, pregnant back in the kitchen, barefoot. And that was not the idea of it at all.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
In fact, you were trying to empower women to make whatever choice suits them without subjecting them to the judgment of outsiders.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
And if I had written that 20 years later, it would have -- well, I would have been older and wiser and more experienced. But it also would have fit into the narrative more. So it was a bit -- it was a bit -- it was early to make that argument comfortably.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So in preparing for the -- for this conversation, I read an article in which David Brooks, who's now a columnist for the New York Times, he once said of the two of you that, and this is a quote, "James and Deborah Fallows have always moved to where history is being made." What did you -- what do you make of that take on your career? It's a pretty high compliment. Jim, why don't you -- why don't you go first?
[JIM FALLOWS]:
So I'm going to buy myself 15 seconds of time by explaining something I said before. It may seem surprising when I mentioned the military is relatively well educated now. That's because of drug testing being in the military, physical fitness standards to get into military, high school graduation standard, etc. So that's why the military, interestingly, is different from the Vietnam era. With David Brooks, that was a very gracious thing of him to say. And so -- and it sort of cast a purposeful narrative over what had been mainly Brownian motion on our part, moving to Japan in the 1980s for a couple of years. And we moved to Malaysia for a couple of years. Then we were back in DC. Then we were in Seattle. And we were in Texas again. Then we went to China. So they all seemed like good ideas at the time. And right now we're in Muncie.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Right. So it -- you're making it seem like it was just good luck. But was it? Deb, do you think it was just luck? Or did you think that some of it was purposeful?
[DEB FALLOWS]:
I think it's back to this push-pull factor of Jim being a journalist in Washington, DC. It's a great place to be a journalist, but it's also a confining place to be a journalist. And since one of us didn't love it as much as the other one did, we -- I think we always felt like we wanted to get out and see more of the world, both for professional and personal and, you know, history of growing up in the Midwest reasons. It just -- it seemed like a very exciting opportunity. And, you know, at the time when we went to these places, Japan was a really -- you felt like the whole world was going to change because of the country. So both journalistically and personally. Well, let's go there and see what that's like. Same thing about China. When we were in '06 going to China and it was becoming more -- it was easier for people to move around the country. So it was still -- it was less random motion. Yeah, it was not.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
And to be -- to give a more serious answer from me, I mean, not more serious than Deb's, but than my previous one -- something -- to me, the reason I love being a reporter is that you are able to see things for yourself and what you didn't know until you went there yourself and saw it. And I don't really feel comfortable writing about or opining about things I haven't seen. And I think that's why we wanted to live in China, starting in 2006. Obviously, China is so big and important. But we needed to be there to have some grounding. And I think we were there long enough, I can give you an opinion about China as I can't really about Russia, where we've never lived.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So you came back -- you lived about three years in China. You came back to the United States in 2009. And when you returned, I understand there was a little bit of kind of culture shock in coming back. Is that true? What was the nature of it? And is there something that inspired you to begin researching the book that became Our Towns?
[JIM FALLOWS]:
I think it was an extension of what had propelled us for the previous decades of just wanting to go out and see. And maybe the most direct connection was when we were in China, we were based first in Shanghai, then in Beijing. But we spent as much time as we could on the road. And we saw all of the Chinese provinces we could legally get into, excluding Tibet, for example. We did go to Xinjiang back in the day. And so we thought once we were back in the US, we could recover for a little while. And it was still in the aftermath of the '08/'09 financial catastrophe. And so we thought, what would it -- what is it actually like now in South Dakota? What's it actually like in Iowa or rural New York, whatever? And so was just wanting to be propelled to head out. That was -- let's say that was the impulse.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
That was the impulse. And Jim posted something on The Atlantic to the question of, "We're about to head out around the country and look at some small towns. Tell us a story of your town. If you have an interesting story, why would you -- why would -- why should we come visit your town?" And within about a week, we got 1,000 responses from people all around the country. And we thought, gosh, maybe we're onto something here. You know, let -- so let's go out and see it. And we had a small plane, which is the same small plane that brought us here to Muncie today, in fact. And that was a great -- both practical and privileged way to go around -- privilege. It is a single engine, four-seater plane, you know.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
Propeller plane.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Propeller plane.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
You're not on a Gulfstream 10 or --
[JIM FALLOWS]:
No. No. We were flying -- we flew through the clouds for -- all the way from Kentucky to here. So yes, it's a privilege means of transport, but it's sort of like a flying RV.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So when you've got all those responses, as you said, 1000 responses in a week, is that when you -- maybe this is expanding on a comment you made a moment ago. Is that when you had a sense that you're on to something, meaning the disconnect between people's perception of the country as a whole and what is happening in their communities, in their town, in their city.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
I think that message, which is what we believe now, grew after a while. At the beginning, we just went out with a blank slate and thought, let's just see what we see. We did visit a lot of towns that had some financial trouble. The plant closed. The mill closed. The factory closed. Or a tornado had come through or interesting cultural shifts, big immigration waves, things like that. And we just wanted to see how people addressed their challenges, if they did. We didn't know what to find. But I think the -- after -- it took a while to really be able to focus on and understand and articulate -- mostly understand -- the difference between the way people were looking at the -- were creating or responding to a national narrative and then -- and the way they were living on the local level.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
And I think this is something we had the privilege of discussing with you three years ago when we were here, going -- coming through Indiana after our book came out, which is that how much is happening in how many places around the country that nobody really knows about beyond their own sphere of exposure. So we wanted to try to shift that narrative or at least share that news.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So in a moment, I might ask you, the two of you, about your impressions in the times that you've been to Muncie. But in your book, the end of the book, you describe kind of the 10 common secrets or ingredients or attributes, whatever is there. I'm not asking you to list all of them. But why don't you identify a couple of them that you think are important for all of us to think about the terms of the work that we're doing in terms of community or civic revitalization?
[JIM FALLOWS]:
These were a range of attributes we'd found not in any really scientific or systematic way, but things that just struck us. For example, is there a civic story that people know? You know, when you think about the US, people know the American story. They know its ideals, and they know its heartbreaks. And many stories, they have a sense of what the story of that town is, how it was built, what it aspires to, what its challenges are. Certainly, in Muncie, we were struck that there was a -- it was a powerful story here. We also noted that the role that educational institutions play in their communities is crucial and that if research universities are sort of the modern equivalents of ports or other great natural resources, how those research universities connect with a community in a region really makes a big difference and community colleges. And I'm also leaving out the role of -- you can talk about the half attribute or the arts or—
[DEB FALLOWS]:
This is -- well, I shouldn't steal Jim's thunder on that one. I'm going to save the half attribute for you and just talk about a couple other things. One is leadership. When we first went into a town, we would go around and see a few people, maybe somebody at the newspaper or in the school system or the Chamber of Commerce, whatever, asking, well, who drives this town? Who are the interesting people? And what are they doing to make this town move forward? And the -- I'm getting to leadership with that. Having true leaders in the town that had a vision and that had the power to get other people on board to do things was essential. It was assigned. And it didn't happen very often, when people couldn't think of it or say, who are the leaders? Well, let me get back to you on that. You know, that was always a bad sign. But the leaders could come from anywhere. It didn't have to be from the city government or the school system. Sometimes it was somebody who ran a gallery or the librarian, just some -- but there had to be a critical mass of collaborative leadership in town. Okay. Back to the half.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
I'll give you one more -- briefly one more real one and then the half. One more of the real ones is communities that intentionally make themselves open, that they find ways for people who are not from that town, not from the right families in the town, not from the region, not from the same religion or ethnic group feel as if they can play a part there. And we thought, for example, Sioux Falls, South Dakota has done so much to integrate refugees. They're mainly from Africa and from Southeast Asia. And you wouldn't expect that of Sioux Falls, but they've done it. The 10 and a half sign, the one-half sign was is there a craft brew industry because that shows a certain kind of entrepreneur or a certain kind of clientele, a certain revitalization of the downtown.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Well, we've got that here in Muncie, as you know. We've got a good craft beer culture. So tell us about your thoughts about Muncie on your visit? Do you feel we're on a path? And if so, what gives you -- as you say, Jim and Deb, you wanted to see it for yourself? What was your thoughts after your visit?
[JIM FALLOWS]:
So we wouldn't presume to say, after a couple of days, anything to people who've spent their lives or last couple of years here, who would know far better. But what struck us on outside experience was the role that the university is playing with the community. And I think this is part of a drama that is really of crucial importance around the country. There are some universities who view themselves as kind of walled fortresses. And they're going to do everything they can to have -- you know, to build up all their strength. And the community, you know, that's the community's problem. There are others who have said, "For our institution to have a future, our community needs to have a future." And this is both our opportunity and our responsibility. We've written about how the University of Dayton and Sinclair Community College together in Dayton are doing that. Colby College in Waterville, Maine is taking on this challenge. There's -- you know, in Fresno, Fresno State is doing it. I think that what Ball State has been doing with the community in general and the community schools in particular, I believe it's unprecedented in modern American history. And it seemed to us wonderfully instructive as something that people should know about. So we want to learn more about. And that's what most got her attention.
[DEB FALLOWS]:
And I think in a kind of soft way that is immeasurable, you can feel the energy. It's tougher today because it's pouring rain. But in general, you know, where there is a sense of energy and movement and when you hear in people's conversations, the words, "We can do this, we can do this," rather than, well, we've never done it this way before, you know, there's a vision to meet. And it's possible. And it comes out in the vocabulary of, yes, we can.
[JIM FALLOWS]:
And the engagement at sort of the organic person-by-person level that was necessary to have a lot of these innovations between Ball State and Muncie, I think, is really impressive to us. We'd like to learn -- we would like to learn more about that and share the story with others
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And to me, as we've continued on this partnership with the Muncie Community Schools, what is the most encouraging and maybe the most gratifying is when I hear from a parent that the parents now have a sense of hope for their children. And that's what education, particularly K-12 education, early childcare, early high-quality pre-K is all about, is giving every child a sense of opportunity and hope. And so that's been very gratifying to us as we continue. A lot of work to go. But I think we're on the path. And when we hear that, it gives us all a sense of optimism as well.
So let me -- I'm going to tee up this last question, if I may. You know, we could -- I've got a few more questions I should ask, but this probably would probably go on a bit too long. But I want to ask you the final question that I ask all of the guests that I've had on my podcast. And it's about the iconic symbol of our university. This is the statue of Beneficence, which Deb, as you mentioned, it's a cold and kind of rainy day here. But we walked by Beneficence earlier this afternoon. It symbolizes the generosity of the Ball Brothers and the enduring generosity of their family and the enduring connection between the campus and the community. So Deb, I think as a linguist, you know that beneficence means the act of doing good for other people. So I want to ask you both from a personal and professional level. And maybe Deb, I'll start with you. What does doing good -- what does beneficence mean to you?
[DEB FALLOWS]:
Beneficence is a -- it's a really big word. It's a deep word. And I think it's a bit of a scary word. It's kind of an old-fashioned word. And it's grand. And it has gravitas. Right? Latin roots. When I think as just a normal person about beneficence, I think, okay, this goes with professions, like being in medicine or being connected to religion in some way, also big things. So to me, that challenge of that word is bringing it down to everyday life in some way. And mostly, people don't go around thinking, oh, you know, I have to do good today. But having that in mind as an operating principle or background little voice in your head. If I think of what I do most -- a lot during the days is writing. Okay. What good should come out of this? How can this be good for people? And I don't mean that I have to write Pollyanna-ish things. But there's something out of what you've written that shows a side of -- maybe it points to generosity. Maybe it points to a lack of generosity. But just keep that in mind and have it be a little bit of a driver through what you do, no matter what you do. But just what you do day by day.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Thank you. And Jim?
[JIM FALLOWS]:
I can't improve on that. I will say that, I've been thinking as Deb was talking, nothing lasts forever, not people, not institutions, not nations. And they're remembered through an accumulation of decisions they make one way or another. I'm thinking of my parents, who are both dead now. And they both came from very modest backgrounds. But the accumulation of daily generosity, their exercise in the community was remembered across the whole community after they died. When our nation is best remembered, say, after World War II for the Marshall Plan and for generosity it extended to refugees and the people in other countries. And I think nations, institutions, people are at their best when they're doing things they'll be remembered for in a positive way. And I think this Statue of Beneficence is a reminder of that in the institution and the community here.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Well, thank you, Deb and Jim. Thank you for joining me in this conversation. Thank you for returning to Muncie once again to see what we're doing here. And thank you for joining us in a couple of days at our commencement exercise. I'm looking forward to hearing your remarks on that very special occasion. Thank you very much.
[JIM and DEB FALLOWS]:
Thank you.
It's our pleasure and honor. Thank you.