>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> stephen greenblatt is a literary critic and shakespeare scholar who teaches at harvard. his biography "will and the world" topped the "new york times" bestseller list.

he speaks about the french essayist michel de montaigne. i am pleased to meet you. why did you write this? >> the central part of this book is an edition of a particular translation of montaigne that lets you look over shakespeare's shoulder as he was reading. the greatest french writer and the greatest english writer of the renaissance encountered each other. shakespeare read montaigne. we can be positive montaigne never heard of shakespeare. this is a magical, wonderful translation, and a wonderful opportunity that a colleague of mine, peter platt, and i sought to put together, these essays that were central to shakespeare, these translations of montaigne's essays. john florio was an interesting

character, the son of protestants. began his life as an italian franciscan, but he abandoned the church, became a protestant, fled to england, and had a son, john florio, in england. after a series of complicated moves, the son went to oxford and became a major figure in translation. not only for montaigne, but also for italian tax and italian sources. shakespeare probably knew this man. may not have liked him. it is hard to say. but it was through florio that not only shakespeare, but virtually everyone in england, read montaigne. >> nietzsche said shakespeare

was montaigne's best reader. >> an extravagant thing to say. but he was certainly a passionate reader of montaigne. there was some connection, a surprising connection. after all, they are profoundly different. not only france and england, an aristocrat, a french aristocrat, and a middle-class english playwright are not automatically soulmates. >> one had a more commercial sense. >> much more commercial. hide to make a living. montaigne was a very wealthy man. >> a member of the aristocracy. >> he was active in politics and many other things, until he retired to write his essays. shakespeare met montaigne at a deep level. nietzsche is right that they scared shared skepticism, a wariness about religious

orthodoxy, about hypocrisy. they shared a deep sense of what the human predicament was, what it meant to face the serious issues of life and death. >> tell us more about montaigne. >> montaigne was a remarkable man, the son of a man who was already wealthy. his great-grandfather had made the family money in the wine trade, as the fit someone from bordeaux. montaigne was the third son. was not in line to inherit the title or the wealth. but his older brothers died young. montaigne found himself in this peculiar position of inheriting -- being poised to inherit the family title, the aristocratic title, and the estate. the château. he was involved in an incredibly difficult time in france. france was absolutely falling

apart. it was in its iraq moment of bitter, murderous hatred between the protestants and catholics. montaigne was a catholic, but wanted to mediate. wanted to keep the peace. was a friend of very important people in power on both the catholic and protestant sides. and tried his best to do something to quiet the bitterness in the country. >> he started to read montaigne when? >> i came across montaigne when i was 20, this translation, in england. it was bound in the beautiful college i was at, cambridge. it had beautiful leather binding. it was not a serious interest. i got hooked. as anyone who loves montaigne knows, he speaks directly to you and shows you everything about himself. he does not hold anything back.

>> one said he teaches you how to live. >> he teaches you how he felt he should live. he does not preach to you that way, but he shows you what he grappled with, and he feels like he is in the room with you. his influence is intermittent in england, but powerfully influenced francis bacon, thomas brown, people through the 17th and 18th century. montaigne's influence extends beyond anything literary. montaigne invented, for the modern world, what it is to be biographically frank. what it is to tell you about -- >> everything. >> likes and dislikes. whether it is tasty salads, cantaloupe, what sex feels like, what he thinks about death, what he worries about, does not worry about.

completely, as far as he could, he said he would like to go all the way, portray himself naked, but he is not allowed. but he goes as far as he can. >> why was he that way? >> it is hard to say. the funny thing about it is, for a man who was in some sense obviously willing to show everything, he also -- i think he wanted to -- he had the incredible idea, which gradually developed in him, that he could reproduce himself, as it were. make himself into a book, that he would survive death by being completely here in these words and in these pages. he dreamt he would actually survive his disappearance through these words. and he came as close i think as any human being has ever come to being actually physically in

these little marks on the page. >> you feel like he is there. >> he is there. and that is the opposite of shakespeare, the opposite strategy. shakespeare was also worried about survival and was interested in survival through words. but shakespeare is the opposite type. we know almost nothing about shakespeare, despite the fact that i wrote a biography about him. he is very hidden. he concealed himself. he is not out there. and yet he did, in a different way, find a way of transforming himself into his characters, into other people. >> and montaigne helped him bring his characters alive. >> montaigne helped shakespeare figure out what it would sound like, i think, to be authentically who you are. but it is a completely different strategy. i think shakespeare used montaigne, for example, in trying to create hamlet, the character who is the most out there of all of shakespeare's characters, the most present.

but it is not shakespeare. it is a character called hamlet, a danish prince. >> how do you prove that? >> it is harder to prove it in the case of "hamlet." there are hints, things you could take to be fingerprints. shakespearean's are always trying to prove things that are a little implausible. in the case of montaigne, there are at least two moments in which the fingerprint is very clear. >> king lear is one. >> an amazing moment in "king lear" in which shakespeare was clearly reading an essay about old-age and an essay about the relationship of parents and their children. the essay, a remarkable essay, both startling essays by montaigne -- a remarkable essay on the relation of parents to their children. montaigne says, if a parent is young and vigorous, it is ok to hold on.

when a parent grows old, when a father begins to decline, and the son has come of age, the father should give, basically, everything to the son, and reserve enough to go on, but should not hold on and hold on. old-age will spoil the chances of the young to have a career. parents should give it away to their children. this is, of course, before university tuitions that made parents give it away to their children at an early age. but the concern in montaigne's world is what it means to hold on. you should give it up. shakespeare quotes those words, but he gives the quotation, in effect, to the villain of the play. a villain who says, i hope this is not just an essay, he says. there is a clear allusion.

one of the things that is fascinating about that particular moment is that i think shakespeare must have regarded montaigne as exceptionally naïve about the parents' chances of getting it back if things go wrong. maybe it is being middle class and not an aristocrat. >> you argue he influenced the tempest. >> a clear fingerprint, and unmistakable fingerprint. shakespeare, in that case, comes even closer to simple quoting of montaigne. again, and not thing happens. he gives the quotation to a very charming, sweet, bubble, but quite naïve aristocrat, who does not really understand anything about the natives. he gives, from montaigne's great essay on mechanicals, about the encounter of the old world and the new -- he gives lines

describing how wonderful the new world is, america. shakespeare gives those lines to a character in the play that has a character who is, in effect, an anagram for cannibal, caliban, who was debauched, murderous. you see shakespeare take someone he loved and was influenced by, and turn it and use it. >> you say shakespeare's borrowing is an act not of homage, but of aggression. >> if you are going to swallow something, even something you love, you have to chew it up and break it down before you can swallow it. i think the aggression is a peculiar form -- it is real aggression, but oddly loving. even babies bite the nipple that

they suck. i think shakespeare loved montaigne and also wanted to tear montaigne in pieces. >> about that -- was it simply a mind-to-mind thing? or was there some jealousy on shakespeare's part? >> jealousy, perhaps not, but a very strong sense of, here i am, a middle-class fellow from stratford, from a provincial town, trying to make his way in london. and i have to stain myself by performing in public in the way that i do. here is this aristocrat in a château, in a tower, who is communing with the ancients, and who is really in, and who is deep. but this is not me. this is not who i am.

i think it is the meaning of two different very sensibilities. >> there are some fundamental similarities. >> deep similarities. deep ways which they saw eye to eye, i think especially in the way, the believe in the power of the everyday, the importance of living in the everyday, of understanding that that is what you have. not dreams. >> how is that present in shakespeare? >> it is present in thousands of tiny touches in shakespeare, as well as some grants touches. it is present in the sense that -- in the grandest sense, in a play like "romeo and juliet," that you do not have another world to look forward to. you have this world, right now. this is it. there is nothing beyond this world. but it is also present in the innumerable ways in shakespeare in which characters are touched by the ordinariness of life.

of what it means when hal takes stuff out of falstaff's pockets, and finds candy and receipts, the detritus of the everyday. it is that eye that shakespeare had for what it means to live an ordinary life in the midst of extraordinary events. >> you wrote, both were skilled at seizing upon anything that came their way in the course of wide-ranging reading and observation. both prized brilliant perception over systematic thought. both were supremely adaptable and variable. both perceived and embraced the isolations and contradictions within individuals, the ironies and discontinuities even in those who claimed to be single-minded and single hearted. that is well said. >> they are both spectacular magpies, but there is a huge difference in one respect

between them, at least in these regards. sharing these things, shakespeare believed in the power of stories. montaigne believed in the experiment of just laying out, without story, without narrative, just what is passing through him. >> basically, i do not need a play. >> i do not need a story. he did not believe. >> this is what life means to me, and you will understand what i think about the world. shakespeare says, i will write a play. >> i will create characters. i will make a story. >> graph all the contradictions of life to the conflicts between the characters. you admire one more than the other? >> i admire montaigne perhaps more than any writer i have ever encountered. he is an astonishing human being. an astonishing human being.

and a decent human being. but i think that shakespeare's sense that montaigne has an inadequately developed sense of evil puts a finger on something in shakespeare that is not very visible in montaigne. montaigne knew that there was evil. he lived in evil times. but he did not grapple in the way shakespeare grappled with the most terrifying aspects of the human condition. >> what do you want to know about shakespeare you don't know? >> one would like to know everything about shakespeare. >> at this point, you know almost nothing. >> as a person, we know very little about him. >> was he a performer at the theater? >> he was, but we do not know adequately what he performed in. there are possibilities that he played adam, the old servant, in "as you like it," that he played the ghost in "hamlet."

it seems he pulled back from performing later in his life, probably to concentrate on his writing. we do not know what he thought about people in power, or about the religious claims. >> was he primarily interested in a literary reputation or filling the theater, or making money? >> i think he did not believe they were alternative visions. making money, which he was very interested in, was bound up with what his long-term life, afterlife, would be. i think earlier in his life he thought that poetry probably, lyric poetry, would carry him forward. and he was not famous. he was quite famous in his own time as a great lyric poet. i think as he developed as a playwright, he understood his

long-term prospects would be in the commercial theater, and that there was no gap, no division between doing well in the commercial theater and having the life that has led to this conversation 400 years later. >> the book is called "shakespeare's montaigne, the florio translations of the essays." >> thank you for having me, charlie. >> pleasure to see you. ♪

>> nicholas wade is here. he was a science reporter and editor at "the new york times" for over two decades. his new book that argues social behavior varies among human races due to slight genetic differences. predicts an explosion the likes of which we have not known in decades. has it triggered an explosion? >> i knew it would be a

controversial book. there have been quite a lot of negative reviews. but there have been more positive reviews than i expected. i think the book, if it is successful, will lead to a change in attitudes on many major issues. whether there is any explanatory role of evolution in our present-day societies. >> do you understand when some people believe it is a racist argument? >> i adamantly reject the idea that this is a racist argument. i think race does have a biological basis. but that does not mean you can make any racist deductions from that area. the idea that one race is superior to another, and inherently superior -- you cannot draw that from the genome or the fact that there is a biological basis for race.

>> what is your argument in "a troublesome inheritance?" >> i am trying to interpret the major finding we have from the human genome, which is that we can see human evolution has been very recent, very extensive, and it has been regional. it has been regional because the populations on each continent have adapted to different local circumstances. in this sort of reflects the fact that we have not one evolutionary history, but five, according to the five major races. >> is this in some way a theory of economic and social inequality? >> i think to some extent it does explain why some societies are more successful than others, although i should hasten to say that i am not denying the vast importance of culture. i am just saying there is a genetic element in our social behavior, and this may underlie the fact that societies differ from each other.

>> if you look at south korea, to take one example, which has had a kind of modern economic miracle, is that an argument to be made for something? >> i think there you have a natural experiment between north korea and south korea. exactly the same people, and yet one country is poor and the other is not. clearly, you cannot -- genetics does not help you there. i think genetics helps you in a much sort of broader brush sense. evolution works over longer time scales. i think you can see various social transitions in human society. for example, the transition from when we were hunters and gatherers to when we were a settled society. 185,000 years for us to settle down. why did it take so long?

certainly not because our ancestors could not see the advantage of settling down, but because a change in social behavior was required. it probably took so long because it required that long for the change to evolve. >> you argue, evolutionary differences between societies on the various continents may underlie major and otherwise imperfectly explained turning points in history, such as the rise of the west and the decline of the islamic world and china. explain that. >> human societies have very distinctive characters. which is usually true. it is attributed to culture, but that is a half but this is. it seems to be differences that are quite long-lasting, you may begin to suspect a role for genetics. chinese society, for example, has been distinctive for a very

long time. the first civilization. i think there is reason to argue it has a genetic basis. this is a slightly complicated argument, so let me unpack that. we are a very social species, so we have many ingrained social behaviors. very young children, before their parents try to socialize them, want to belong to a group, and they want to obey its rules. they want to punish people who violate the rules. all these behaviors who probably have a genetic basis, it is social behaviors like that which underlie the institutions in our society. the institutions of law and justice and police forces rest, at basis, on our willingness to obey rules and enforce them. so if you also, if all social institutions are based

genetically, instinct and behaviors underlie them, anything with a genetic basis can be changed by evolution. by changing the level of conformity, the radius of trust, the transition from a tribal society to a more modern society -- the ways in which changes in social behavior can underlie society. >> you wrote, the evolution of human races is another common sense truth, destined to follow the flat earth into oblivion. >> he and many others based their opposition to racism on the idea that there is no biological basis to race. it seems to me that is the wrong way of looking at it. if you hate racism, you oppose it always as a matter of principle, so you do not care what the science says.

you can have the science develop without imposing any constraint on it. >> did you approach it with some hesitation? >> it is a controversial subject. one risks upsetting people who have long held views. it is a matter of principle that gets people upset. >> what is the long-held view that this upsets? >> it is a view that starts in the 1950's, and was the work of an anthropologist called montague, who believed racism was the basis of all evil, and if he could get people to drop the word race, he would solve the problems of imperialism, colonialism, and anti-semitism. to a great extent, he was successful. he persuaded social scientists they should not use the word race, or it had no biological

component. this came to be incorporated into the social science attitude. it became quite widespread on campuses. and in intellectual life generally. we can see from the genome that this is not the case. there is a biological basis for race. it is not particularly surprising. it seems to match up with a common sense expectation. if you take the genome of someone with mixed-race, say an african american, you can assign each segment to an african or european ancestor. this would be impossible if races did not exist. >> chapter eight, jewish adaptations. can you explain why jews of european descent are overrepresented among top achievers in arts and sciences? why is that? >> that is a question to be answered. certainly, jews made enormous contributions to our

civilization. you have had 22% of the population but 30% of nobel prizes in the century. there is something that is worth explaining. the usual explanations or cultural. the hectoring jewish mothers, the respect for education. if it was just cultural, why can't everyone do exactly the same thing and become as successful? since the cultural explanation did not seem adequate, i think it is reasonable to ask, is there a genetic explanation? is there something in history, some selective pressure, that has favored the emergence of unusual cognitive capacity? that is a reasonable question to ask, and i try to address it in that chapter. >> and did you find it? >> i found what i think is -- >> a genetic basis? >> a possible linkage.

it starts with greater literacy. in 1563, a rabbi required all male jews to educate their children, which was a very unusual thing. >> 1563? >> jews, like everyone else at the time, earned their living by farming. there is no advantage to being highly educated if you are a farmer. it is expensive. many jews dropped out of judaism at that time. if you fast-forward to the early middle ages, when trade was beginning to expand, jews found themselves in a very unusual position. they were a highly literary population among another population which was almost illiterate. there is a great advantage in being able to read and write

contracts, to do arithmetic. they became the natural bankers of the middle ages. which gave great rewards to people who were successful at that. you can see how that would have been a selective for sure that would have encouraged anyone with greater cognition. >> one of the things you write and repeated -- racism and discrimination is a matter of principle, not science. its shifting sands do not support values. you also said the barriers erected to combat racism now stand in the way of studying the recent evolutionary past. how does it stand in the way? >> it stands in the way because if you cannot accept that race has a biological basis, it is very hard to study the evolutionary past. because the evolutionary past is the history of the separate

races, separate in a geographical sense. we have been different populations on different continents. we have different evolutionary history. before 50,000 years ago, we were a single species. but if you take any species and split it over the globe, it is going to develop local variations, which is just what we have done. it is not surprising. it is a perfectly natural process. but that is what we need to understand. and it is very difficult to do so if in fact you cannot say, i am studying this particular race, or this particular quality, the difference among races. it is very hard to get a grip on the problem. >> he said researchers at present you routinely ignore the biology of race or tiptoe around the subject, lest they be accused of racism and see their

careers destroyed. >> it is an academic jungle out there. it is very hard for people to talk about race. i found this in reporting the findings from the genome. as soon as one got anywhere near the subject of race, researchers would stop talking. >> when we say race, what does it mean? >> it is a fuzzy category, because races are not separate. if races become separate, they become different species. so our population exists in the form of several major races and many minor ones. in terms of genetics, it is to do with frequency, a subtle distinction. basically, we all have exactly

the same set of genes. genes come in alternative forms known as alleles. different races would have different alleles but even that is not the case. some alleles are more common among some races than others. that is a pretty subtle difference. >> the book is called "a troublesome inheritance," by nicholas wade, who has written a number of books, including "before the dawn," something about dna and human genomes. how changes in respective lenders let us begin to understand how human beings have evolved from hunter gatherer forebears into effective members of today's advanced human societies. back in a moment. stay with us.

roger ebert was one of america's best-known film critics for 46 years. he reviewed movies for "the chicago sun-times." he was the first some credit to win a pulitzer and the first to receive a star on the walk of fame. when he died after a long public battle with cancer, president obama said, for a generation of americans, roger was the movies. when he did not like a film, he was honest. when he did, he was effusive, capturing the power of movies to take us somewhere magical. in 2011, he published a memoir called "life itself," turned into a documentary. here is a trailer. >> one of the most unusual american documentary films i have seen in a long time. >> roger ebert was the definitive mainstream critic in american cinema. he has been riding for half of the history of feature films. >> roger was amateur writer early on. >> he wrote a novel. >> he won a pulitzer prize.

>> how did roger ebert write "beyond the valley of the dolls"? >> this is the title. >> he was good at dishing it, but he could take it. >> he is a nice guy, but not that nice. >> i am a little excited. >> i am less excited, roger. >> roger ebert and jean siskel were the most powerful critics of all time. >> even though roger wrote "beyond the valley of the dolls," gene lived the life. >> i am going to crush you. >> that is totally unfair, because you realize -- >> they almost did not care what anybody else thought as long as they could try to persuade the other. >> this morning, i confess i am a sick person. three years ago, i felt a lump under my chin, and it turned out to be cancer. >> roger had a core made of steel. do you want to rest or work a

little bit? >> ask steve. he is the director. >> he is a soldier of cinema who cannot even speak anymore, and he plows on and touches my heart very deeply. >> he gave life to new voices, gave life to new vision. reflective all the diversity of this nation. >> he made it possible for a bigger audience to appreciate cinema as an art form, because he really loved film. >> the movies are like a machine that generates empathy, and lets you understand aspirations, dreams, and fears. it helps us identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. >> joining me now is steve james, the director, a.o. scott, film critic, and chaz ebert, roger ebert's wife and widow. what about the movies roger so loved he expressed it right

there? what was it about roger you so loved? >> i love that he was a man who wanted to engender those feelings of empathy for other people. i think it is wonderful for someone who has the curiosity to want to know, get into your head, and see what it is like to be a person of a different race, a different age, a different nationality, a different gender. that is the person who has the kind of curiosity that makes this world a better place. >> what about you? >> i had an interesting experience this past spring. i was teaching a course to college students, film studies majors. we read a bunch of the greatest hits -- pauline kael, james agee. we read a bunch of roger's pieces, some essays for a series of books called "great movies," some of his best work. we read one on "the best years

of our lives," one on a movie called "chop shop," and one on "planes, trains, and automobiles." of all the critics we read in the course of the term, roger was the one the students responded to most. they were too young to have grown up watching "siskel and ebert," but the voice and the empathy -- i think he identifies that is what makes movies work. they are machines that generate empathy. roger could explain and express that empathy to the reader. it is like you are sitting next to this guy, like he is a friend of yours and you are watching the movie with him, and he is telling you both what you are seeing, because he was very technically astute, and he understood the history and the technique of cinema, but he is also telling you how the feelings are working, and how this picture of humanity you are watching is making you feel what

you are feeling. i do not think that goes away. the kids had not necessarily seen the movies he was writing about, but they could respond to these pieces of writing and understand something about what these movies were doing, and understand something about the person, roger, who had seen them. i think that is a really important and rare thing for a film critic to do. >> steve, you all roger in a different circumstance, because you were there as he was experiencing a battle with life and death. >> and of course, when we started this film, we were not expecting to see that. we absolutely wanted to document roger's life and chaz's life in the present, to see their day-to-day lives and the ways in which he was routinely overcoming the obstacles of the illness and fragile nature of his health at that time, and to see his perseverance, his work ethic, and his sense of humor.

and we saw all that, but we also ended up documenting the last four months of his life. it was particularly poignant and inspiring that none of those qualities went away, even though it was the last few months of his life. >> we are talking about the impact that chaz had on roger, which was considerable. here it is. >> chaz was probably more life altering for him than his tv show. she really, really liked him for what he was, and not who he was. >> she changed his life immeasurably. she changed his personality. i was eight months pregnant and roger grabbed the cab in front of me in new york. he is not that kind of guy now. i think gene was so happy that roger found his mate.

>> he was 50 years old when we got married. he used to tell me, i waited just about all my life to find you, and i am glad i did, and i am never going to let you go. i mean, hm -- wow. i do not even know what to say. i just think that love transforms a person. i think that when roger and i found each other that i saw him. i really saw him. i think he saw me. not just a superficial seeing. it was like a deep soul-seeing. it was transformative. my love for him transformed him,

but his love for me transformed me as well. that is why when he got sick, that is why i was there for him, because it just -- i don't know. it sounds -- i don't know. it is hard to talk about it. but it was something that was real and that was concrete. sometimes, we think of love in abstract terms. in the abstract, you can say anything. love is this, is that, is romantic. but love is also hard. when you say it is better or worse, you better mean it. in sickness and health, you better mean it. it is more than a notion. it is more than a notion to be with someone that sick. it is a commitment. >> what couldn't you film? >> we could not and did not want to film those last days. that was never going to happen and is not something people should see.

roger was courageously open and public about this battle that he had, and chaz as well. but at some point everyone has a need for privacy. i think what was so remarkable about the way roger was public about the illness is that he -- it never felt like, look at me. look at what i am going through and how brave i am. it always felt outer-directed, toward people who might be in the same situation. he would even make fun of it. he would joke, i look like something out of "the texas chainsaw massacre." you would laugh at it, then at the same time you would appreciate the beautiful wave in which he had accepted this. >> roger was on this program many times. here is one from 1996. 1996, talking to me about movies as an art form. here it is. >> for me, this is a direct

quote, no other art touches like the movies do. >> it takes us inside the lives of other people. when a movie is really working, we have an out of the body experience. and this is not the psychic network. has this never happened to you? come on, charlie. you are so wrapped up in the story that you really are not aware of where you are going to have dinner, what is going to happen tomorrow. you only care about what is going to happen to those people next. when that happens, it gives us an empathy for other people on the screen that is more sharp and more effective and powerful than any other art form. and i am speaking as someone who loves to read. i love to read. but the movies do touch us more deeply, i feel, than any other art form. >> i think what he is getting at is really the heart of his identity as a critic, which is

that he took movies to be an ethical and a democratic artform. that is that they had a responsibility. if they had that power to take you into other peoples lives and make you feel what other people are feeling, and to make you care about what happens next, they have a responsibility to do it honestly and do it humanely. he held movies to that standard. he did not like movies that were cruel, that were cynical, that the trade the kind of trust we have in them to make us care. and i think it was also, i think, one of the reasons that he loved the movies, was that they were democratic. they could be about everybody and about anybody. and they also had the responsibility to show the world in its variety, and people in their variety. >> what was it about "siskel and ebert"? it has never been duplicated. >> and i am telling you, it is hard.

that does not happen. i think some of it is historical. it has to do with chicago and these rival newspapers. i think there is a point in the movie where people involved in the show, neither of these guys thought the other one should be on it. "what do you need him for? i am a great film critic." there was tension between them. there was a wonderful and endless conversation that was sometimes antagonistic and sometimes not. criticism is at its heart an argument. when you go to a movie, you come out and you want to have someone to talk to about it. you want to have someone to argue with about it. you want someone sitting next to you to say, you are wrong. they turned that into this great theater, four years and years and years. >> here is roger ebert on "siskel and ebert." >> we hated each other without

any reason, because we had never really had any conversations. he was at the tribune. i was at the sun-times. in the elevator, we would look at the buttons over the door. we were competitors. >> when did it change? >> we were in the same boat together, like these guys in "the perfect storm." the guy would go in the water after the other guy. when he falls down, he goes after him. you cannot let your fellow sailor drowned. gene and i were on the same boat for 23 years. we went through some things that were life experiences. and we had an opportunity. it was a great opportunity in our lives. we were chicago newspapermen, and now we are on a national television show. how did that happen? >> he also went through gene's death. >> which hit him very hard because he did not know that gene was dying. that is one of the reasons roger

said yes to doing this documentary, and also why he was so public and open about his illness. he said, gene was -- they were like brothers. when we were told he was taking time off and coming back to the show later, we thought that was true. someone called us and said, we think we have an obligation to tell you this. gene is not coming back. he is dying. if you want to see him, you should go to the hospital. we were going to go, but he passed away before we could get there. did not get to say goodbye to his brother. so he said, is something like that ever happens to me, please don't do that. let people know, people who cared about us. i do not think he intended it to be so public.

>> you hope this film leaves viewers of the film -- >> i hope the film leaves them with an appreciation for -- i think it is life affirming. i think there is such an appreciation for life that roger shows. i feel he is luminescent on that screen. i really think so. i hope -- our love story. i hope that gives us some people hope. i hope that makes them -- i do not even know how to say that. i also -- family. when things -- toward the end, what do you have? roger was a great grandfather. one of the things that touches me deeply is looking at our granddaughter, raven, talking about the things she learned from her grandfather, and how deeply she was affected by his death.

i realized what a gift roger gave us, to show -- he is looking death straight in the eye and he says, i am coming. i am ready, and i am not afraid. he accepted that as a part of life. our society turns away from illness, turns away from death, all of those things. roger said, take a look at it and don't be afraid of it. i think that's a gift. he also was so brave. i think this movie be sort of exposes the underbelly of the brutality of what it is to live with a catastrophic illness. it was a struggle for him to get up every morning and do what he did, that he did it with a twinkle in his eye. that is an amazing man. i think he is extraordinary. >> and he has not only the legacy of his life with you and what he meant to your family, but also is remarkable because of print and because of television and because of movies. that combination of things is always there. you can always take a look at the movie.

that is a remarkable thing. that will always make them alive, i think. here is what "life itself" said. this is the book. a candid personal history. ebert chronicles it all. love, losses, struggles, recovery from alcoholism, marriage to his beloved wife, his politics and spiritual beliefs. he spoke about "the chicago sun-times" and his life-changing collaboration with jean siskel. your members his friendships with studs terkel, oprah winfrey, and russ meyer. he shares his insight into movie stars and directors such as john wayne, werner herzog, and scorsese, with the same observations his readers have cherished. this is more than a memoir. this is an inspiring look at

life itself. which is the title. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

>> live from pier 3 in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west," where we cover the global and media companies that are reshaping our world. i am emily chang. salesforce has named a new ceo. hawkins helped manage the transition to selling more subscription software. twitter is expanding its suite of advertising reaching a deal to buy tapcommerce.