This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Molle, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky.

We are besieged by a literal deluge of data.

Much of it is about population, economics, finance.

Much of it has to do with things racial and class

and of course, political.

But finding our way through the data can be really challenging.

A few seem to have the gift of looking at the data and telling us what the picture is,

what the story is going to be, and where all this information is pointing us. My conversation today is going to be and where all this information is pointing us. My conversation today is

with just one of those people. Joel Conkin has been described by the New York Times

as America's Uber

Geographer.

He's the kind of person who can look at data and tell us what it means.

Give us the story.

And he has that rare gift of being able to look to the future.

He is also one of America's leading public intellectuals, and we are glad to be future. He is also one of America's leading public intellectuals and we

are glad to welcome Joel Kotkin today to thinking in public. Mr. Kotkin, our new

book The Next 100 Million, America in 2050, has engendered a good deal of public

conversation and for good reason what was behind your writing of this book?

Well I thought that there was a need to sort of take a more objective what I was I would look at and say what are

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