Are those birds I hear behind you?

Yes, yes, there's lots of...

I'm out on the porch, stretched out on the couch,

and the porch looking at the mountains I'd like to be hiking around in.

I just been laughing and laughing because I was thinking,

like, of course you interview Bill McKibben. He's written over a

dozen books. His book from 1989, The End of Nature, put climate change on the agenda. And in the

years since he has been one of the major environmental activists of our time

playing a leading role in launching the fossil fuel divestment campaign and the opposition to

the keystone XL pipeline. He has been named one of the 100 most important global thinkers by foreign policy

magazine. Bill McKibbon, thank you for joining us on Current Affairs.

Well, it's a pleasure to be with you. Bill McKibbon's latest book, which we are here

with him to talk about today, is the flag, the cross, and the station wagon. A graying American looks back at

his suburban boyhood and wonders what the hell happened. And the flag, the cross, and the station

wagon takes us back to Mr. McIbbin's childhood in Lexington, Massachusetts, a town I have been to myself and

a town that embodies many tendencies of about America, both positive and negative.

It's interesting.

In the beginning of this book, you almost suggest that over the course of the dozen books

you've written, you avoided talking about your

suburban boyhood at Lexington, Massachusetts on the theory that it was too boring. But then you

came to realize that actually there was a lot that was quite important about Lexington, Massachusetts

and your life there, and this little world of your childhood can help us explain a lot.

...