announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. charlie: everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you to think. that is what steve jobs said in 1995. today, there is an estimated 18 million people who code either professionally or as a hobby. but for the rest of us computers are opaque. even as they power everything from our cars to coffeemakers, many of us understand little of how they work. this week, the editors of bloomberg businessweek magazine hoped to change all that. their new cover story is an essay on code.

it seeks to explain the inner workings of computers, apps, and software, and provide an inside look at the lives of the programmers who build them. at 30,000 words, the essay takes up the entire issue and is the longest article the magazine has ever run. joining me now is josh tyrangiel, the editor of bloomberg businessweek, and paul ford, the author of this piece. great to have you. so just tell me how this all came about. josh: it came out through ignorance and a lunch. which is how many things come about. [laughter] so the ignorance is mine. i have been working on a website for 12 years. to be charitable, i understand about 50% of what is going on. in some of the software meetings. when you talk about how you're going to build a website, with the architecture is, and i am trying my best to follow it. boy, it is hard. i come from a liberal arts that

-- background. i find myself thinking a lot. that's not a great place to be. i still hope to have many decades in my career. knowing that something so important is something i am just getting by on is not good. so i called paul. he is a unicorn in our business -- charlie: he doesn't look like one. josh: he is. he is a brilliant writer. and he is a programmer. we had conversations and paul did a great cover for us on how come but it is behind the scenes. -- complicated it is behind the scenes. i said, paul, we should do something on code. george zachary: i gave him 5000 words. he said give me some are. and then we landed at 38,000 words. almost a book. charlie: is this a book?

paul: awfully close. josh: it's complicated. one of the mistakes made over the years encoding is to find one metaphor and hope that it sticks. now that software is in your park at -- in your pocket, and your house, and in front of you every day, i imagine how how socially acceptable it is for us to be ignorant about software. imagine if it was medicine. take the pill, i don't know. charlie: was an it is quote about the laity? josh: every trade is a conspiracy against the laity. that is part of what we want to do is the anthropology. who are these people and paul can speak to that. charlie: they are the people -- if they don't run the world, they run the things that run the world. paul ford: i think that's true. what is happening when people undertake to teach people code they teach them to make something move around on screen or do some very simple things and then they tried to go back

for more, to learn how these things work and they get very lost because it is a huge world. if you go art and start googling around and try to find out how to solve a problem, you will get lost in the moment. what we are trying to do is the anthropological guide for the people who find themselves thrust into this world and want to make sense how this technology works together. charlie: is this too simple, that what computers do is not that, in terms of mathematics, is not that complicated. what they do is do it so fast that you can solve amazing problems? paul ford: that's correct. you can watch a movie on your computer because they are incredibly quick. but they are really just being -- flipping switches billions of times. being able to manipulate time like that is what has given us this enormous industry. charlie: who is this article aimed at? josh: as you know, so much of

what we do is aimed at me. charlie: it's all about my curiosity. josh: yes, and some of it is aimed at mine, but i actually think there is a great swath of the white-collar world that is in the similar position to me. it used to be that software was something they would engage in at home on the computer. now know matter what business you are in, an accountant, a small business person, you are surrounded by software, either software you use, software you are making for your customers. if you don't understand it, you're going to be left behind. we are at a tipping point. we have had software for decades now. charlie: if you do not understand it, you will be left behind. josh: absolutely. charlie: jobs could understand it, but could he program? paul: some of it. he understood how it works when he was in the 70's, when he was just getting started. as his career went on, he continued to go levels and levels up and hired people to

build these abstractions for him. josh: one of the things i think paul does so well in this piece -- what is fascinating about the anthropology is, we think once a coder always a coder. we were talking about this question -- why are so many programmers angry? and it really gets at this fundamental issue. technology changes. so your skills, they are like -- paul: it is a nerve-racking industry. you go away for a few months to work on a project, six months is a good window. 18 months, it is a whole new set of languages and paradigms you need to pay attention to. charlie: josh: so what was the attraction for you way back when? paul lee -- paul ford: i am a funny hybrid. my father was a creative writing professor. he pointed to our commodore pet

computer. commodore was just a wonderful company. he said, you know, programming is a little bit like poetry. you are trying to express as much as possible in as little and as efficiently as you can. that stuck in my brain. it was always a part of my life. also a source of economic stability for a writer. charlie: did you have any sense that i would realize readers, this is good for you, this is good medicine, but i don't think you're going to like it. josh: no, i actually think it's funny. we were talking about this, but -- charlie: there are 30,000 words. crawford del prete: -- josh: 30,000 words is a lot. we do not shy away from excerpt in the body of the piece. at the same time, paul is funny. if you are going to learn about this once, if you're going to take the focus and one-time try to catch up, try to get ahead, that is what we are here to do

make it easy for you. i will say, look i joked with paul -- we put lines of code in in part to show how serious we are. i treat them like the names in "the brothers karamasov." you gets that you're in russia you don't always need to know who is talking to whom, and that's valuable. for the people who are there to really parse it, it is a sign of us engaging with the top level. charlie: how do you define the code? josh: there are many ways to define it. we define it as a set of instructions in a file and the computer takes those instructions, breaks them into tiny pieces, kind of makes sense of them and turns that into code that the computer can execute. so code is what you write when you want to make an iphone app. code is what you write when you want to make a dynamic website or when you want to create an online catalog. charlie: how powerful is this? paul: very powerful.

the room we are in now, in the 1980's, could not have held a computer that powerful. charlie: this room could not have held a computer as powerful as this is. in 1990. paul ford: yes, that is a unix piece of equipment in your pocket. it is a tremendous piece of machinery. charlie: tell me the difference between java and html and all of these things. josh: i can't obviously do that with tremendous fluency. paul: html is the language to make a webpage. it's a set of tags, you described, this is a headline, this is a paragraph and so forth. that's how -- the web is fundamentally in these markup tags in that content. java is a straight up programming language. you sit down and write code, write instructions, and it is all compiled together. there's lots of lineages like

-- languages like this. what makes java very interesting is it is very popular in the enterprise. it is a big language for building big systems. charlie: it came out of sun microsystems, didn't it? paul ford: right, and it is well aligned with the goals of oracle. what makes java so possible is that has an enormous amount of pre-existing, very well organized code. charlie: help me here. a language java or html or whatever it might be, there are 1700 coding languages. josh: that's just the beginning. charlie: ok, the beginning. what is a language? josh: it's really just a set of instructions. charlie: that's what it is? paul ford: yeah, it's guidelines. if you do these things and you do them in the way we specify, we will translate this into the machine code and it will run into the computer. apple is very big on languages two objective c and --

if you learn the rules of those languages, you will be able to learn -- charlie: you can build an app from apple. josh: absolutely, and there are lots of language systems. just like we have the renaissance and the romantic language is, some are written out of different flourishes designed for a specific task. there are elements of which your only questec system can only be applied swiftly to a task. -- your own linguistic system can be applied swiftly to a task. charlie: with the two of you, we have one and a half code writers. [laughter] we are going to write a new app for apple. paul ford: the first thing you do is you go to apple and you download a day development environment called xcode. it is half a dvd's worth of code. you open it up and write code inside of there. you don't necessarily -- you might actually drag a button and put it into a grid so you start

to sort of wire it up where the buttons are in your app. then you start to write code for what happens in someone clicks cash when someone clicks that button. so all the pieces start to fit together. the process of testing your app, there is a button that is like a play button on a cassette machine and you press that and it compiles it into machine language and runs that app. you can start to play with and tested there. -- test it there. then you go back and repeat that process very likely hundreds of times. charlie: that is also true with android or apple or any other. paul: yeah. especially with these big companies. they deliver what are known as dk's, software developers kits. they give you a lot of the library systems you knew to make things look and behave a certain way. that is why come on your iphone, so many of the apps look and feel and have the same typography because apple defines those rules. they defined how that is going to work. charlie: what is the difference

between sprints, standups, and scrums? josh: it depends on which group of developers you talk to. part of my confusion is i would go to meetings about the construction of different websites in one company and the same people would use different language in different meetings. i thought it was just to torture me. in fact, different sets of people have different sets of definitions for these kind of things. paul: what you're talking about is different aspects of what is becoming the agile methodology of software development. all its is is a set of principles and rules. standups mean we are all going to literally stand up and have a meeting at a given time. as short as possible. then there are rules for how the stand up can be done. the idea is to force these different programmers to work together with all of these different pieces of code that work together so you don't have the situations where you come in every morning and everything is. broken.

so it is a continual form of communication. ♪

♪ charlie: this article says that the biggest commercial insight of the tech industry is if you can control the computing environment, you can control markets. how does that play out? josh: think about what apple was

compared to 15 years ago. they just had the worldwide developer conference and the unveiled a whole new set of protocols, all designed to get people building things inside the apple architecture. it is a very popular architecture, well-defined. the more you build in that architecture, the more you are attracting commerce. i decide my app is going to be built on the apple infrastructure, even though apple is smaller than android, it is a better infrastructure for my coding. if you are making things for people to come interact here in the apple universe, on my platform, that ensures my indispensability to the customer. even though there are some of the smartest people in the world running these companies, they know a crowd attracts a crowd. when they reveal, when they talk about that this is an stk, it is to watch an entire generation what the white album was to another generation. you can see the values. it is a big deal. paul ford: it is possibility.

you are going to have xcode at home and apple says, hey, you are going to be able to do these 150 new things. you are going to be able to access the watch in new ways listen directly to the heart beats and so on. people take that go away and think, what can i do? what can i create with that? charlie: i go to the business schools -- harvard, stanford the best across the country, and i find these business school graduates who are in industry, consulting, and they go to business school -- are those people going to become coders? josh: it is too late. [laughter] charlie: but it's not too late for me. paul ford: it's not too late for you charlie your unique. it is a little bit like suzuki method. language skills. your brain is so pliable at a certain age. in your late 20's and early 30's, most people are actually transitioning out of coding. charlie: to what? josh: to project management, to executive level jobs. and i think what we are trying

to get to is for those students who are now heading out to the valley to try to run the businesses, they really need to understand not just who these people are who are making this thing they are selling, but how they think. charlie: also to communicate what you want and need to the coders. josh: what is possible. and when someone says that something can't be done -- there's no greater frustration. you go to your lawyer and you feel like slamming the table. you want to know why. obviously, there is reason. what we are trying to do is open that window. when somebody says, the code just doesn't play that way. you cannot reach and get an off-the-shelf solution. you understand what that means. charlie: and you can ask why. josh: frankly, you can call their bluff sometimes. paul ford: you really can always learn. there are people who truly are prodigies. but i didn't start coding seriously into my 20's. i've never been a great programmer. i talk about that in the piece.

but i've always been able to do enough to get my own work done to build things for people and so on and so forth. so there are opportunities to pick it up. but it takes some focus. charlie: is there a common denominator among the best and most brilliant coders? paul ford: it is a kind of mathematical genius. the deepest thinkers are very, very deep mathematical thinkers. if you are getting a phd in computer science in stanford you are a brilliant mathematician. josh: i liken this piece where we address the mid-level executive directly in a very funny way. those genius coders, they are not coming to work at your crappy company for the same reason that phil jackson is not coming to coach your best ball team. [laughter] we forget because we interact with google all the time. we think, oh, we just get one of those guys. no, this is rarefied these are incredible, high level

-- charlie: there's huge competition in silicon valley to hire them away. paul ford: that's why it's very expensive. charlie: expensive like, i want a piece of the action. paul ford: and cap . some of them just want to go that backing for six months and call in for a week. charlie: and if you are good that's ok. josh: it's a tough market. they can set the skill level. some of what we have seen, too is that there has been a sense of entitlement among some of the bad actors. charlie: why are they so angry? they should be happy. josh: you spend all this time becoming great at interviewing people in the english language and tomorrow we tell you charlie, it's all about or tds. -- portuguese. you're constantly afraid. charlie: i'll have to learn portuguese. josh: you have to learn fast. you've got a week. [laughter] so there's that, but you can also imagine the amount of discipline, the amount of focus it takes to build a set of

instructions that work and that work as you stack them up is enormous. one missed place semicolon in your code, everything comes crashing down. charlie: whoops. so that's why they are angry. the stress. josh: they are angry because of the stress, there's tons of competition, someone's always gaining on you. and because the thing you know -- you think you know is changing so rapidly. but that doesn't excuse some of the other things, including what we point out. the sexism, the lack of diversity in the profession -- these are real issues. charlie: i've become enormously curious about the dramatic velocity of change in medicine understanding cancer and understanding the brain come all -- and all those kinds of issues. the technology there -- it's mind blowing. paul ford: software and hardware has changed the industry in every way. this is one of the pieces that code happens everywhere. it is not just microsoft word or working at apple.

there is an unbelievable number of companies that do a huge amount of work in medical services. just the screen that works with the cat scan machine takes a team of 20 or 30 just to make that part work. charlie: this always comes up in any conversation today about silicon valley. why so few women when steve jobs, as you guys point out, in had -- steve jobs had an original photo, some of the most -- some of the people around him -- paul ford: were women. it just became a masculine culture and women were repeatedly pushed out. it is that simple. when you talk to women who were programmers 20 years ago, they were in environments where they just felt incredibly and -- uncomfortable all the time. they were patronized him sometimes. they were coming in late because it was not a very feminine thing to do. charlie: sexual discrimination not sexual harassment. josh: both. paul ford: both. josh: this is a case of people

drinking their own kool-aid. you're told you are a genius. so all sorts of bad behavior gets tolerated. frankly, it is a results-based business, like so many businesses. but you are right. there are fewer women in technology executive positions than there were 20 years ago. charlie: are there fewer women coming out of computer science graduate schools? paul ford: far more. josh: far worse. charlie: far worse? paul ford: it's less than 1% -- less than one in five. it's bad. josh: and from a humanistic sampler, it's terrible. this is a terrible sign for the business itself. there are few enough top coders that businesses are struggling to attract talent. and we have eliminated half the population? charlie: that is the dumbest thing you can imagine. paul ford: these are cultural products. they require diversity in order to function for everyone.

yesterday, i think it came out that apple was finally going to support menstruation in its health services. and it's been a while. people and been wondering when that is going to happen. why did it take so long? charlie: tim cook had a mindset to look at it. i think that's one reason. what are we representing here in terms of what kind of company do we want to be? and how do we have programs and policies that attract -- josh: they made diversity of -- a lot of people, through shaming frankly, have been forced to stand on stage and say we have a problem. it's a pipeline. to really become a top level with all sorts of expertise, you're talking about 8, 10, 12 years of development. we are not going to see significant turnaround in this until at least another five years, and then we are going to start grading to see who is serious. charlie: what do you want people to come out with this, if they make an attempt to read this? paul ford: and hopefully succeed. charlie: yes. josh: what i really want them to

get is that this is a world that is right all around. they have to make a consistent investment in understanding it. parts of it are mystifying. no doubt. but a significant portion of it is quite understandable and they should feel empowered to explore it, to ask questions, and to treat it as just as on a -- off to -- just as odd a profession as anyone else. charlie: hang in there and give yourself some time to develop some traction. josh: i would go even further and say, look, you already know how to minute late software. you are doing it all day long. you have opinions about it. certain software works better for you than other software. just as you would watch a ballet and want to know what was that move, you should look at your iphone and say, ok, how did they do that. paul ford: and there is tremendous pleasure in that. it works.

charlie: i can see it in you. paul: oh, i love it. charlie: thank you paul. stay with us. ♪

.

♪ al: bernie sanders is the junior senator from vermont. a socialist and independent, he caucuses with the democrats. he was the mayor of burlington,

vermont and he spent 16 years in the house of representatives. this spring, he announced his candidacy for the democratic presidential nomination, calling for a redistribution of income to address inequalities a crash effort on climate change, and the end of influence of special interest money in politics. he had been considered a quixotic challenger to the formidable frontrunner, hillary clinton. but he is drawing huge crowds in new hampshire and connecticut. bernie sanders, thank you for joining us. bernie: thank you for having me. al: the wisconsin straw poll has that changed your thinking calculation? bernie: that is what i thought from the very beginning. we are running this race to win. al: and you can win?

bernie sanders: i do, and i'll tell you why. i think the american people are very disillusioned with the establishment. they are working longer hours for fewer wages. they are seeing 90% of all new income going to the top number 1%. wealth inequality in this country, people are worried about the kids. they understand we are the only major country on earth without a national health care program. when you look at the politics in this country, what do you see? the koch brothers buying elections. al: you said you will win the new hampshire primary. will you win in iowa, too? bernie: there is no question that hillary clinton is the leader in the polls. but i think we have the momentum. if you look at the polls, we are closing that gap a little bit. so, i think if we stay on message, if we continue our organizing efforts through our website, berniesanders.com, we are going to run a very grassroots campaign. that's what people want to see. i think we've got a really good shot in both states. al: you are as confident in iowa as you are in new

hampshire. bernie: i am not making any predictions. we have a long way to go. we are the underdog. we are going to be way over spent. secretary clinton has a formidable political infrastructure. but i am feeling good about our chances. al: some say, yes you are going to do well in some of those early states. they have a lot of issue-oriented white liberals. but when it moves to states where they have a lot of african-americans and latinos, you will get clobbered by hillary clinton. bernie: i don't think so. in truth, i come from a state that has a small african-american population and a very small latino population. that is simply the truth. but the message we have, whether it is the need to create millions of decent paying jobs -- i was talking yesterday about a horrendous national tragedy which almost nobody is talking about. and that is real unemployment for young african-americans in this country. do you know what it is including those people looking for work and those who are looking for part-time and want to work full-time?

it's 50%. a black baby boy born today, if we don't change the system, stands a one in three chance they will end up in jail. that is a tragedy. i think the hispanic and african-american community will take note of what we have done over the years and what we will propose during this campaign. al: the other candidate in the field is martin o'malley. he is against the transpacific trade pact. he is attacking wall street. he wants to tax the rich more. what is the difference between bernie sanders and martin o'malley? bernie: i met martin o'malley once in my life and he was governor and he hosted a democratic summit. he seemed to be a very nice guy. all i know is, for the last 30 years or more, i have taken on every element of the

establishment. when i was mayor, we invited everybody to come to vermont. as a congressman and a senator i have taken them all on. i have taken on wall street and i am calling for the breakup of the major financial institutions. al: and that history is different from martin o'malley. bernie: people will have to judge. i am not here to criticize mr. o'malley or anybody else. al: you differentiate yourself from secretary clinton. bernie: on the issues. i know what i have done throughout my life. i have been a leader on taking on big money. i have led the defending social security caucus to protect people from cuts in social security. in fact, we are even expanded social security. i'm glad mr. o'malley is against tpp. i have been against every trade agreement and i am leading the

effort, helping to lead the effort. al: you mentioned big money several times. you have said you are going to get outspent in this race. no super pac's for bernie sanders. but what you're doing online with small donors, give us an estimate. bernie: this is a huge issue. you are asking why people are coming out to meetings in large numbers. there is profound disgust. citizens united, 5-4 decision, which says to the koch brothers and other billionaires that they can essentially buy elections and buy candidates. and a lot of people i know including conservatives, think that this is what american democracy is about. this is oligarchy. we have to be honest about it and the media has to be honest

about it. needless to say, i am not going to get a lot of support from billionaires. i don't want their support. i don't need their support. i don't have a super pac. but to answer your question, since we have been in this race for all of five weeks, i think we have gotten close -- certainly 150,000 individual donations. you know what they average? $40 apiece. al: will you top 10 by june 30? bernie: this is the more important point. the question is, given the citizens united supreme court decision, can any candidate representing the working-class the middle class, who is prepared to take on billionaires, can you win elections? or is this country's legal system so corrupt that it is only people holding big money that can win? al: the only way to change that is a constitutional amendment. it's been 25 years since we amended the constitution.

bernie: this is a very difficult issue. what we could do, certainly, i cosponsored legislation for a constitutional amendment. i believe i know what we can do is have disclosure legislation. which means is if the koch brothers or any other billionaire wants to -- al: no more dirt money. bernie: and their faces will have to be on that ad. in my view, if you want a dynamic democracy, you have to move the funding of elections. this is a huge issue. al: what is the sanders doctrine on when to commit american military force? bernie: obviously, there are times when you go to war. al: is there criteria? bernie: it has to be based on everything, depends on what is happening. al: president obama just sent 450 advisors to iraq for the fight against the islamic state. you say we have to lead the effort to defeat the islamic state. bernie: no, i did not say that. i said the muslim nations

themselves in the area have to be the leaders. you're looking at saudi arabia the third-largest military budget in the world, far more powerful than isis -- why aren't their troops on the ground. al: do you support with the president did this week? bernie: i have to think about it. i haven't reached a conclusion yet. but the president has been tried to thread a needle here, walking the tight line. he does not want combat troops in the region. nor do i. on the other hand, he wants to play a supportive role. where the line is drawn, i'm not sure. al: you're not sure if he has done the right thing or not this week. bernie: i don't know enough about it at this particular moment. al: let's talk about another problem area, russia and putin. you have said he is a bully and we need to stand up to him. sanctions have not had an effect. is there a time that you would escalate actions against putin? bernie: go to war? al: if he went into georgia, what would we do?

bernie: i would hope that this country has learned a lesson from afghanistan and iraq. we were told these would be easy wars and our troops would come home. wars have consequences that you cannot predict. so going to war against russia are you going to do everything you can to prevent that? i support what the president is trying to do in iraq. i get nervous when i hear my republican colleagues talking about, you know, sending troops here, sending troops there. there comes a time when you learn a lesson that war is a last resort. what happened in iraq was a total disaster. unintended consequences, massive destabilization. so if i hear even talking about going to war against russia, it makes me very nervous.

you take it case-by-case. but this talk about war is very dangerous. i don't like that. al: let's talk about climate change. bernie: let's talk about war reversing climate change. al: pope francis is going to issue a sweeping doctrine on climate change as a moral issue. it is an issue that is stalled in america, especially legislatively. do you think the pope's declaration will have any impact? bernie: i think i talk more about the pope on the floor the

senate than any other member of congress. i think this pope is doing an extraordinary job. if you think my views are progressive on economic issues i don't come anywhere close. he understands the power and vulgarity of money. the koch brothers and big energy are telling the republican party, if they come out and recognize the reality of, change, if they attempt to do something like that, they are not going to get campaign funds. let's be honest about it. so you have the embarrassing situation of a major political party, that controls a house and the senate, rejecting what the overwhelming majority of scientists are saying, what the pope is saying, what virtually everybody is saying. and republicans are saying we don't know if climate change is real. it is real. it is already causing devastating problems. we have to lead the world in transforming our system. whether the koch brothers like it or not. al: what do

your instincts tell you about what the pope's declaration might be? bernie: he is one of the most important religious figures in the world. he has a stature. i think it will resonate. young people in this country are saying to the republicans, what, are you nuts? of course climate change is real. we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to sustain natural energy. al: you call for a massive redistribution of income from the very wealthy. as i read your website and your speeches, chiefly through the tax code. you want to close out a loophole such as that which allows people to avoid taxes by going to the cayman islands. wht -- what would you raise the top rate to? bernie: we are working right now on a comprehensive tax package, which i suspect will for the top marginal rates go over 50%. but here's the story. you talk about correctly my

desire to see redistribution of wealth. over the last 30 years, there has been a massive -- we are talking about many trillions of dollars being redistributed from the middle class to the top 1/10 of 1%. when the middle class is disappearing, millions of families with virtually nothing in the bank, they have to retire. it is time to redistribute wealth in this country. tax policy is one of the ways we do that. al: what are your instincts about the corporate tax? you want to eliminate loopholes. should that rate be increased? bernie: yes. if you look at the collective percentage of revenue coming in from corporations, it is significantly lower than it was in the 1950's. it is about 10% today. it was much, much higher than. al: that cannot just be changed by eliminating loopholes.

the rate has to be increased. you have spoken today several times about the billionaire class and the influence that they have. the insidious influence they have. are there good billionaires? bernie: this is not a personal statement. of course i'm sure there are good, decent human beings. it is not an attack on the individual. it is an attack on a system which allows today a proliferation of millionaires while the middle class is becoming poorer and allows the millionaires to play an ugly role in our campaign finance system, such that they are now able to buy elections. someone says to me, aren't their liberal billionaires? there are but i don't think any billionaires, liberal, conservative, should control it. i come from a small town. we have town meetings.

one person, one vote. you raise your hand. that is my understanding of democracy. not billionaires, no matter what their politics, buy elections. al: you would also like the size and clout of labor unions in america. what is the best way to do that? bernie: you give the millions of working people in this country who want the opportunity to join the trade union to be able to do so. right now, employers using many tricks to prevent that from happening. so i believe in support of legislation which says that, if 50% plus one in a bargaining agency want to belong to a union, they should belong to a union. this is policy we had in the united states.

it it exists in other countries. i think that's i think, if you give workers a chance, they will join unions. al: you are opposed to the ban on semi automatic weapons. bernie: no, no, no. i was opposed to the brady bill. al: you did vote against the brady bill. and you voted against making gun makers liable. why are you different than most liberals on the issue of guns? bernie: i come from a state -- you know how much gun control there is in the state of vermont? none. thank god, we also have one of

the lower crime rates in america. that is the state that i represent. i voted to ban certain types of assault weapons. you know what grade i got from the nra? d-. al: you are not a pro-gun zealot. [laughter] bernie: no. what we understand, in states like vermont, guns are associated with hunting, with antique gun shows, with target shooting. i understand that in los angeles and detroit and chicago, guns are a very different thing. al: you want to break up the big banks so there is no too big to fail. can you quantify that? is there a number? bernie: let's look at the top six. of the top six, they have assets around 10 trillion dollars. that is equivalent to 60% of the gdp of america.

they issue a huge amounts of credit in this country and the mortgages in this country. i think very simply, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. al: is there a number we can put on that, their assets? bernie: i don't know that i have an exact number in my head. but certainly among the major six, i would break them up. and by the way, if teddy roosevelt were alive today, i think he would be doing exactly the same thing. not a very radical idea. al: you raise questions about hillary clinton and banks and wall street. doesn't most of that date back to when her husband was president and she wasn't an elected official? is there anything she has done more recently that makes you think she is a captive of wall street? bernie: i've known hillary clinton for 25 years.

i have a lot of respect for her and i intend to run this campaign not on personal attacks but on the issues. hillary clinton and i disagree on a number of issues. in the forefront is the transpacific shipping i have helped lead the effort against it. i have been in opposition to all these terrible trade agreements that cost us millions of jobs. i frankly don't understand how you can be a major candidate for president of the united states. al: you and martin o'malley appeared before the executive board. they asked all of you about it and i'm told by reliable sources, we don't know what is in the tpp. we don't know the details and i can't take that position until the details. bernie: there is some truth to that. that talks to the reason why you should vote against it. if a major, major bill, which deals with 40% of the world economy, is coming before the united states congress and members of congress don't know what is in it, do you think it might be a good reason to vote against it? al: you voted on the fast track.

bernie: if the fast track gets passed, tpp will get passed. you can be for it. the president is making a terrible mistake. the majority of democrats are against it. every union in the country are against it. most of the environmental groups are against it. i can respect the -- if hillary was to come out for, come out for it. but i think this is an issue you have to speak out on. al: let me go back to wall street and you and hillary clinton. what is your sense of her view on banks and on wall street? you watched her. you served with her on the senate. you listened carefully to what she said. bernie: hard to say. i think the issue is do you feel comfortable with the kinds of power that wall street has economically and politically? i do not. that is why i want to break up these banks. that is why i put forth all of these legislation to curb interest-rates.

hillary clinton, it is no state secret, has received a lot of money from wall street. we will see what her views are. but i have not seen her, at this point, speaking out in a way that i think the american people want candidates to be speaking out. al: and what are some of those specifics that you would like to see her speaking out on? bernie: glass-steagall has to be reestablished. al: it was repealed during her husband's administration. bernie: i'm not blaming her husband. people were saying this is so great. we are going to deregulate wall street. check out what i said at that point. i led the opposition to it. sadly, much of what i predicted, in fact, came to be true. in terms of iraq, hillary clinton voted for the war in iraq. i voted against the war in iraq. my vote turned out to be the right vote. in terms of the usa patriot act, hillary clinton voted for the patriot act. i voted against the patriot act. i think we can combat terrorism without undermining the constitution and our privacy rights. on climate change, the key issue that has come up before the congress was the keystone pipeline. which was called for the excavation and transportation of some of the dirtiest oil in this world from canada to the gulf coast. i voted and helped lead the effort against it. what is hillary clinton's stand on it? al: do you worry she is to interventionalists prone in foreign affairs?

bernie: yes. i think the vote to go to war in iraq, which i think she has acknowledged was a poor vote maybe suggests that she wasn't as thoughtful as she should be in looking at the evidence. i did not believe what cheney was saying, what donald rumsfeld was saying, what bush was saying. i didn't believe that we had to invade that country. i certainly did not believe it would be a quick and simple war. she came to a different come to a different come cluj and -- conclusion. al: donald rumsfeld said the other day that maybe we should not have occupied iraq. bernie: don't get me going. i was the chairman of the

veterans committee. i have talked to too many veterans who came home severely wounded in that war. 500,000 came home with tbi and ptsd. we lost 6700 troops. we helped destabilize the region. i can remember like it was yesterday, rumsfeld telling us how easy it would be. and cheney telling us how easy it would be. and what a tragedy that war was. al: how about libya? she was a prime advocate of intervening in libya in 2010. was that wrong? bernie: i don't know enough to give you a definitive answer on that. al: if hillary clinton were to be president, during the --

there is no one she listens to more than bill clinton. is that good or bad? bernie: bill clinton is a very smart guy. al: you served eight years in the congress when he was president. is his counsel generally the sort you like? bernie: bill clinton is clearly a very smart guy and a very articulate guy. and who did many good things as president of the united states. but he did many bad things as well. and if you remember under the clinton administration, we

moved forward on nafta, the beginning of disastrous trade policies that have cost us millions of jobs. bill clinton was wrong. we moved forward to deregulate wall street so we could be more competitive in the global economy, blah, blah, blah. that was a terrible disaster which led to the wall street crash. so i think there is a lot to be said. he did a lot of good things but he certainly made some serious mistakes. al: do you consider obama a more progressive president van clinton? bernie: yes. al: if hillary clinton upset

you to become the democratic nominee, what steps could she do to clarify the sanders base? bernie: it is not just a question of this issue or that issue. it is a question of tone. the reason that the middle class is disappearing -- and we have 45 million people living in poverty, is because, for the last 30, 40 years, there has been a well-planned and determined attack on the middle class. trade policy, sending our jobs abroad. not raising the minimum wage. tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. a variety of tax on medicare, a tax on social security. what we need today's leadership that says to the american people you have got to stand up. al: are you having fun? bernie: i am very gratified. yes, i am enjoying it. i am especially gratified at seeing these large crowds that we are drawing in. we had 5000 people in minneapolis. i think people are ready for the message which calls for fundamental change in our politics. al: thank you so much for being with us. thank you for joining us. ♪

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