>> from our studios in new york ity, this is "charlie rose." charlie: ted koppel is here. he served as anchor and managing editor of abc's "nightline" from 1980 to 2005, 25 years. earlier this year he became a special contributor to cbs sunday morning. he's won eight george foster peabody scombaurds 42 emmys. his recent book, "lights out: a cyberattack, a nation unprepared, surviving the aftermath," is now in paperback. i'm pleased to have him at this table. welcome. ted: thank you. charlie: it's great to have you

here. 25 years at "nightline." ted: if we could just get rid of the cameras, we could do what we always do, sit and gossip. this political campaign season, you have seen a lot of -- ted: yes. charlie: does it signal that somehow all of politics is going to change and this is a con flexion point for the way we play american politics and the way we cover american politics and the way the parties get along? ted: i think it is, charlie, but less because of what is happening to the political system than what is happening to our business. we have totally demotte cratized communication in country and that sounds like a wonderful

thing. everybody loves democracy but the idea of a representational government is that you have congressmen and senators and people who spend their entire lives, theatrically, trying to do what is best for the country. what you and i were meant to do as journalists was the same kind of thing. we were supposed to gather information and then process it. give people what was most important. we're way past that now. we're at a point -- donald trump told me in cleveland -- charlie: this was an interview you did? ted: yeah, but we were just talking after the interview. he said you know, i don't need you guys anymore. he meant you and me. and he's absolutely right. he said i have 20 million twitter and facebook followers and if i want to get a college -- message out, i just do it through them. so anybody who thinks that this fiasco is going to be over on

november 8 is just dreaming. is this is going to go on. we have never had a situation like this where someone like mr. trump, who i don't believe ever thought he was going to get this far when he started but who has developed something of a taste for this. he's not going to go back to selling soap and real estate and steaks and water and college and whatever the golf course is. charlie: i agree with you, he's intoxicated by the process and he also thinks he's a figure -- he believes he went to the head of the parade. it wasn't something he created but something that came together and he's intoxicated by it because he likes this notion of people who like to him, who believe in him, who stick with him and who they believe he reflects them when no one else does, so that gives him, i think, a real sense of i want to be art -- part of this process.

i'm here to stay. ted: well, and the fact that he so many - infuriates people in the establishment, whether that's our establishment of journalism or whether it's the political blip, or the definition establishment, that just endears him all the more to many of his followers who just feel be traded. the accomplishment has let them down so this guy who comes along and says, in effect, all the things he's not supposed to say, that's part of his great charm. charlie: but it also is a reflection of how a significant portion of the american people feel. they don't feel like anyone listens to them, they have no impact. they don't feel their life is going to be better and they don't believe the system is fair.

and forces beyond their control. ted: yep. but donald trump is in some respects like a political lottery game. you put five bucks into the lottery on the off chance -- really, maybe it's 10 million to one or 100 million to one but you could win $100 million, right? and i think there are a lot of people out there who look at donald trump exactly the same way. is he really going to change things? maybe not but we know damn well that the establishment hasn't done any of the things they've said they were going to do so let's take a flyer on him. charlie: i agree with that. also, there is a sense that we believe in change. he may not be the change that we want but we want to cast a protest vote. if you look at the polls, she's ahead and different polls are saying different things. it may be a little bit tighter

than it was and we don't really know. we'll find out tuesday in november but my sense is that hillary clinton recognizes that she's got a very difficult time ahead. not only because of what's come out in this campaign about emails and who she is, but she's going to have as difficult a time governing as anybody's had in a long time, if she wins. if she wins. tony: i think that's exactly right. the fact of the matter is that some of the republican congressmen are already making noises about the investigations, right? really? you know, before the election is even over we've goodbye to got the investigations going? well, -- got the investigations going? well, yes. the fact of the matter is as long as it was her or donald trump, a great many people in this country were prepared to say all right, i'll hold my nose and i'll vote for hillary

because i can't stand the idea of donald trump. once donald trump is theoretically out of the picture, all of a sudden the limelight falls entirely on hillary clinton. charlie: and she's got pressure within her own party as well. ted: she's got pressure within her own party. she's going to receive an awful lot of pressure from the left and i'm not at all sure that she's going to be a happy lady two weeks into her administration. charlie: even if she has a democratic senate and that will give her some power, some capacity not to have to fight some of the battles. still you have these 0 votes to avoid. ted: even if she has a democratic senate, it will be by a vote or two. it's not going to enable her to do that much. it's still going to be a largely divided -- charlie: what about journalism? ted: that's a real disaster.

charlie: why? ted: first of all, in the years that you and i have been around, charlie, there was a day when people in our end of the business -- i'm talking about broadcast journalism -- genuinely felt that we had a mission out there to give the american public news that it needed and that has changed in some measure because of the technological inventions. we didn't have cable, we didn't have satellite. we didn't have the internet. you didn't have the blogasphere. it also changed because of the economic dynamics. 40 years ago, 50 years ago the networks were printing money down in the basement with all of the entertainment programs they were doing and because there was a certain amount of government regulation, the f.c.c. actually had some clout in those days, so the deal was go ahead, you make all the money you want to make

on your entertainment but make sure that you give the american public -- operate in the public interest, necessity and convenience. those were the three catch words and so we had a commitment to doing that and you and i were talking about it just before we went on the air. abc, nbc, cbs, among the three of them had more than 100 foreign correspondents 40 years ago. 100. based all around the world gathering information. these days, i'd be surprised if they have 20 among the three of them. probably not even close to that. charlie: but at the same time we are, on the other hand, we have some very brave correspondents that are covering the attack on the effort to retake mosul. you see them every day -- ted: let me just say, my hat's off, particularly to the women at what is now our network at cbs.

holley williams. liz palmer doing an absolutely brilliant job. charlie: one is in aleppo and the other is on the road to mosul. ted: the quality is there but you don't have the quantity, which means that whole sections of the world are uncovered. if you listen, and i recommend to your audience -- i'm sure a lot of your audience does it anyway. listen, pick up npr in the morning, 8:00 in the morning and listen to the bbc for an hour and just take note of how many important events are taking place around the world that are never covered on american radio and television. charlie: indeed. back to this campaign, how -- campaign that has been based a lot not on issues but on assaults, on character assault. have we ginn -- given enough attention to the issues or have

we been distracted by this campaign that generates so many snleds name calling -- ted: of course we have. let me tell awe story that seems to be unrelated but really isn't. back to the time of the hostage aking in iraq, i learned that group of american diplomats and there may have been one or two intelligence people in the group, maybe five or six of them, had escaped from the you see embassy and had taken up refuge in the canadian bar. it was turned into a movie. charlie: argueo. ted: i learned of it. was going to go on the air with it, received a call from the then-secretary of state vance. he said ted, i'm not denying the story. it's true but i'm asking you as a serious journalist not to carry it because i think you can

see that it would jeopardize the safety, possibly even the lice of those people. and it's the only time in 50-plus years in journalism that i killed a story. when the movie "argueo" came out, all of a sudden the -- argo came out, all of a sudden the subject was hot good evening and -- again and i found myself talking to marvin kell be, who was my counterpart at cbs and victor -- found out that both of them got the same story, got a call from the secretary of state and agreed not to use it. kill the story. charlie: the point is? ted: my point being, in those days you only had the three networks. the fact that the three of us were prepared, without having spoken to one toot -- another, to kill that story meant it was dead. the story didn't run. you could never do that today, charlie.

there is no way with the thousands of outlets, the thousands of blogs, the tweets, the facebook, the social media, the various channels on cable and satellite television. there is no way that you can kill a story. so long-winded way of getting to your question, which is, how can how tation, let's say -- can one network -- let's say cbs for the sake of argument. if it were to focus entirely on all the serious subjects that you and i in principle can agree -- charlie: and can cover then prom. we have the privilege -- program. we have the privilege of being on public television. ted: exactly. but if they were to do that, they'd get their butts kicked in the ratings and sooner or later someone up there in management

would say guys this is not a private clibe you have here. charlie: something like that happened this year in terms of anybody who refused to do a telephone interview with donald trump. all of a sudden found them doing a telephone interview on the other shows and they had the ratings. during that time that trump was an entertainer and was attracting attention. ted: which is the ultimate paradox of his complaint now, that there is a terrible media bias against him. to a certain degree, i even accept part of that as being a legitimate statement. i think the media, certainly the establishment media, has taken a position that comes dangerously close to saying, you know, we feel that donald trump is such a danger to the republic that we're going to do things we have never done before.

"the new york times," for example, putting the f-word, spelling it out on the front page. can you imagine that they would ever have done that in the past? however, for donald trump, who owes where he is today to the fact that he got the kind of unbelievable coverage on every television station -- charlie: he got that coverage because he was generating ratings. ted: exactly. exactly. charlie: if donald trump refuses to release his tax returns, as an example, or hillary clinton doesn't have a press conference to talk about emails what do we do? what's our responsibility? ted: that's a perfectly legitimate question and the answer is simple, you try to cover it. charlie: of course you do but you ask them and they don't say. ted: you do whatever you can to find out. charlie: somebody sent them un

solicited, a copy of an earlier tax return. ted: who did that? charlie: they don't know, they're not telling us. ted: they don't know but the fact of the matter is journalism has always depended on someone with a conscious or a grudge, right? saying i'm going to send this to the times. charlie: do you miss not being a part of this every day? ted: no, i really do not. charlie: is it because you have a life that this would interrupt, get in the way of or because you've done, that been there and -- ted: i must tell you, charlie, at this campaign makes me -- makes me very sad. charlie: it makes everybody sad. ted: you know this is an extraordinary country. i mean, it really is. i came here as a young immigrant from england and i love this place. i think it's just remarkable and

you remember churchill's great line, the americans always end up doing the right thing but only after they've exhausted every other possibility. that's largely true. i mean, americans have always done things in their own sort of wild, chaotic fashion. charlie: i was reading about you today. you were narbletsed 10 years after you came here. ted: yes, because i had married an american woman and we had our first child so i had an american child. i mean, there was no great pressure on me. being a british citizen in this country is no hardship. charlie: what do you regret? ted: about? charlie: this journalism career you had. are there missed opportunities, roads that you didn't travel? ted: roads, that's a little too grand, charlie. charlie: i like to quote poetry whenever i can can.

[laughter] ted: there are stories that i certainly would have done differently but as i look back, i can't imagine a more rewarding professional lifetime. i used to sometimes when i'd go to a college and give a speech, they'd say well, why do you want to be a journalist? i'd say wait a second. my colleagues and i wake up in the morning, we get on the phone and say what's the most interesting thing going on in the world today? who are the most interesting people? what are the most interesting places we can go to and then? les pays for us to go there. charlie: this is the most interesting of times. not necessarily the most hopeful but i think it is in the end. let's talk about the book and then -- because that will lead us somewhere. i just interviewed james clapper and we talked a lot about cybersecurity, about the power -- this light had come out in paperback.

"lights out: a cyberattack, a nation unprepared, surviving the aftermath." lay out the threat of a cyber attack against this country and why it hasn't happened. touchdown well, look at everything that has happened and look at, in one respect, the most interesting thing about the cyber attack that in effect has created this awkward situation with hillary clinton and the democratic party. charlie: right. and her chief -- her campaign manager. po desko. ted: and her campaign manager, right. here are 17 intelligence agencies which are saying, in effect, the russians did it. and the russians say no, we're not. prove it. if you can. and vice president biden comes out and says we're going to get you guys. e're going to respond.

and then interesting interesting happens. charlie: the question is does putin know? he said yes. will the rest of us know? he said i hope not. the point is they'll do something that will be embarrassing to putin and he'll know where it came from and he'll say i better think twice before i order this again. that's the operative idea. ted: that's the operative idea. now, something happened this last weekend. do you remember what it was? there was a distributed denial of services on the internet. charlie: oh, yes. ted: and it knocked out how tos of operations. right? now, my guess is, and that's all it is, that that was the russians. charlie: let me tell you, because i did an interview with clapper and that was one of the headlines that came out of that. it probably was a non-state actor, he said. ted: may be but a non-state actor can still be working for he russians.

charlie: that's true but i think he was indicating that it was someone else. ted: maybe, maybe not. my point is in the good old days of just the nuclear balance of power, we always knew where the danger was coming from. if the rockets were launched by the soviet union, there wouldn't have been any doubts in the president's mind who did and it rebate bution should be taken. in this, the russian and chinese are already inside our electric power grid and they have the capacity of taking down one or all three of our power grids. charlie: when you say inside, what do you mean? ted: they've been mapping our power grid through using the internet to get into -- it gets kind of wonky, charlie, but it's the -- system.

the surprisery control and data acquisition. it's the system that controls the normal of electricity in this country. if you can get inside there, you can cause failure. charlie: so therefore are you saying -- they're inside and they could cause havoc. the reason they don't do it is they know we could do it and they are more vulnerable? ted: no, i'm not saying that at all. in fact, i'm saying exactly the opposite of that. charlie: we don't have the same power to get inside their system? ted: we do. we do, but what do you do if there is a cyber attack and the president is sitting there in the situation room and has all his intelligence around him and he says who did it? well, it looks as though the attack came from stockholm. really? yes, but before that, he was -- it was routed through wellington, new zealand and before that, it was routed

through buenos aires and as best we can determine, sir or ma'am, it came from brooklyn. brooklyn? really? now what do you do? against whom do you take action? charlie: that is the problem and they call that attribution. touchdown exactly. charlie: but they tell me that they're much better atry bution. ted: but it still takes a long time. charlie: they know and they spoke out about the north koreans and they're hacking of the sony corporation. ted: but it took them a couple of months. charlie: they also suspect the chinese did the personnel -- in washington, they have not identified and sabs -- said we know it was the chinese. why don't they do that? the answer on the part of some is they don't know yet what they want to do. first they want to be sure they have it right and secondly they want to know what they're prepared to do before they

signal them out. ted: and thirdly, that was only intelligence gathering. a huge amount of intelligence gathering, arguably the greatest intelligence windfall of all time. they got 22 1/2 million personnel record. charlie: people that they want to know something about so they can approach them for one reason or another. ted: exactly. 22 1/2 million. but you'll remember, mr. clapper, i think, at the present time. charlie: director of national intelligence. ted: director of national intelligence almost said wow, pretty impressive. if we could do that, why not? intelligence gathering is ok. economic warfare, less so taking out one of our most criminal infrastructures, that's an act of war, charlie and i don't think that either the russians

or the chinese are going to do it because it would amount to war once the attribution was made. but as you go down the capability scale, the yoirnians, iranians, oreans, -- the north koreans. the syrians did something a few years ago when they hacked into the associated press and put out a little bulletin and the bulletin said there has been an attack on the white house, that someone had shot a gun into the white house and the president's whereabouts were not known. within something like three minutes, the a.p. realized they'd been hacked and put out a correction. within those three minutes, the dow jones dropped 300 points and service -- it was simply the syrians who had their own cyber warfare capability saying to the united states, watch it, guys.

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♪ charlie: there is the accusation that the russians, that they are hacking because they want to question the credibility of the american election system. that was quite a different thing that had been done. although it was said that vladimir putin believes the americans are trying to undermine him all the time. ted: i think he is right.

charlie: and that we try to create problems to him. he believed in ukraine that it was the cia that created the problems that led to the president of ukraine having to plea to russia. ted: we are old enough to remember that back in the 1950's, the cia was extremely active in central america, undermining governments we did not like. 60's -- 1960's, 1970's charlie:. we have been protecting dictators. ted: they were simply different tools of that time. we now have new tools that are far more dangerous. charlie: what do you think vladimir putin is up to in the broader sense? ted: i think he is restoring some of russia's greatness.

i think it hit a lot of people in russia very hard that they were now considered a second or even a third rate power. i don't think you can overestimate how important that is. charlie: has he played his hand well and has he made russia relevant? ted: look, you are his pal. the two of you looked adoringly at one another. charlie: those were some of the hardest questions he is been asked. i would like to go tomorrow and talk to him. ted: so what i. -- so would i. no, you did a brilliant job of interviewing him. you clearly had a fairly warm relationship.

charlie: i got him to be engaged. you want to engage people so that in a sense they are trying to be as open as they can be. ted: that is your great skill, you engage everyone. charlie: it is like the sun and the wind. ted: exactly. i was far too windy in those days. charlie: you were far too brilliant. should we expect -- what, we have three electric grids? should we expect one of them to be attacked? the intelligence people seem to be surprised that there has not been a successful attack against

the united states on our own soil. there is been isolated attacks. ted: at the risk of being repetitive, an attack on the grid would be an act of war. here is a way of wrapping in the subject we were talking about before, the campaign. when donald trump talks about building a wall, we are living in an age where roles -- walls are truly irrelevant. you don't need a wall -- to attack the united states. charlie: the wall would not prevent you. we know the israelis believe that the wall they have built has made the more secure. ted: that is true, but it is a very small country.

you can do that more easily in israel and the israelis have to be more concerned about a physical attack, but i guarantee you the israelis have spent as much or more time on cyber defense and worrying about the ability to respond to a cyber attack as we have. the point i was trying to make before is that we end the russians, we and the chinese have so many interlocking interests, i think it is unlikely that an attack, a cyber attack from them, would come in the next year or two. iran, a little more likely. north korea, much more likely. if they have a capacity to do it. i think they would. certainly an outfit like isis. if they can certainly higher someone was sufficient cyber

expertise, the hardware can be bought off the shelf. charlie: you know what is amazing about covering international affairs, war and peace, nations in competition for good or evil, it is certainly in the middle east, how relationships are constantly changing. i just saw that the turks are saying to the united states, let us go together after raqqa. it's incredible to me. ted: it is incredible. and if they happen to knock off a few kurds -- charlie: it is amazing inside of syria. sometimes we are supporting people that our friends are against. ted: that shouldn't surprise us, the germans in the japanese used to be our enemies.

in a long lifetime. charlie: have you ever lived overseas? ted: yes. charlie: after you came here and started working, i know you covered vietnam as a radio correspondent. ted: i went as a television guy, that is how i made the transition to tv. charlie: you were the correspondent, but you lived overseas? ted: yes, i was based in southeast asia or 3.5 years. my family lived in hong kong and i spent most of that time in the -- in vietnam, laos, cambodia. charlie: i have never lived overseas. i have covered a thousand stories in a thousand parts of the world. you could just take this over while i go away. ted: and there will be a

national campaign saying bring charlie home. charlie: no, it will be like, who is charlie? now in paperback, "lights out," by ted koppel. it is all about the new threat of cyber attacks. you will understand more about cyber espionage and that the world we live in is vastly different than it was five or 10 years ago. thank you. back in a moment, stay with us. ♪

♪ charlie: eric kandel is here, he is a former nobel laureate. his new book explores the relationship between art and science and considers how science can help us perceive, appreciate and understand great works of art. it is called "reductionism in art and brain science, bridging the two cultures." eric: thank you for having me. charlie: both of them are concerned, science and art, with the deepest questions about human existence. they sure that concern.

-- they share that concern, but we think of them as separate. eric: this book is designed to show that it is not a separate as we think and why it is not separate. the point has been made that humanity's concerned with art and literature and science is concerned with the nature of the universe. that is because scientists have different aspirations and goals and use different methodologies. in this book i make the point that in certain instances, this is not the case. for example, in brain science, and we have seen this in the program we have done together, the goals of the scientists are very humanistic to understand consciousness. these are all important humanistic questions. in addition, teachers, artists, often use experiment approaches.

very much like scientists, a painter can try different things in order to see whether they are getting exactly the kind of impact -- charlie: i think it was richard sarah said to me once, at art is about -- that art is about making choices and moving on. choosing this color and then moving on, and then to make another choice about what this line does. science is about making choices. eric: solving problems is the way he puts it. this is the point i try to make here, that it became very clear with the abstract expressionists. charlie: what you mean by reductionism? eric: i mean taking a conflict problem and selecting one component, that you want to study it in great detail.

many artists study one particular thing, color or flatness. charlie: how does that relate to what you did in terms of memory? eric: what i did was to take a conflict problem like memory and say to myself, you know, studying your memory would be very difficult. but what happens if i take a simple case of memory in a simple animal, i might be able to make progress that way. i took a marine snail that had very few nerve cells, each of which was large, and i could work out a neural circuit of behavior and induce a change in the behavior as result of learning and see what happens. we found that learning involves changes in the strength of synaptic connections. that is a simple example of a

reductionist approach. this is been used repeatedly in biology. it is all based in a reductionist approach. using reductionism in science is nothing new, and it is also nothing new in art, but people have not thought of it in those terms. charlie: specifically abstract art. why specifically? eric: because in some ways it is more experimental and it allows the artist to play with your imagination and focuses on certain aspects of things. in abstract art, and artist might focus on color, jackson pollock might focus on the splatter of paint on canvas. they focus on simple things, simplifying the test and allowing the imagination freedom to wander. one of the wonderful things about abstract art is the viewer

response to it very differently. charlie: you say that abstract art and science address questions and goals that are essential to humanistic thought. what are those questions? eric: in science, particular brain science, we want to understand how the human mind works. in art, we want to understand how people respond to works of art, how the imagination works, how we should stimulate the imagination. one of -- what are the things that are pleasing to people? those are the important questions. charlie: i want to take a look at some slides. this is a turner. eric: i love this turner. this next sequence really outlines the whole task before us. turner was interested in ships at sea and how they confronted the natural forces, the storm at sea, the clouds, the waves, and these ships struggling to handle

themselves under the circumstances. and this is a very figurative, beautifully detailed depiction. we now return to this theme four years later, and he has done away with much of the detail. you barely recognize that it is a ship because you see the mast and see that a lot of the detail is gone, but you still see that the strip -- ship is struggling against the forces of nature, and in some ways because it leaves more to your imagination, it affects you more powerfully. this is a very interesting thing about this work of art and abstract art in general. there are processes involved and how you when i look at art -- you and i look at art. when i look at you, for example, all my retina sees is the art

-- light bouncing off your face. that is clearly insufficient for me to recognize charlie rose, so there must be other sources of information, and there are. bottom-up and top-down. our visual system is involved over hundreds of thousands of years, and it has brought to bear many built-in clues it uses automatically. if i see a source of light, i assume it is above because the sun is above. there is a built-in mechanism whereby we make a lot of essentially guesses that make them correctly 90% of the time. that is why everyone recognizes you. in addition to this built-in mechanism, there is a top-down mechanism.

we learn different things, we have a different experiences, we have seen different works of art, different people, and that acquired experience enriches us. the more vacant is, in abstract art, the more you rely on top-down processing. one of the reasons abstract art is pleasurable for people is because top-down processing involves your imagination and creativity, and that is pleasurable for most people. charlie: the next slide is a william de kooning. eric: he is considered one of the great artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. he painted this in 1940, it is of a woman he was to marry later. if you look at her right arm, you can see it is quite

abstract. there is a mixture of abstraction and figuration. within a short period, he became extraordinarily powerful and abstract. this is one of his most powerful excavations. it mixes cubism and abstract is him -- abstract. a causes you to spin around and move. you can see figurative elements. he often goes back and paints women, but you can see figurative elements even in the abstract painting. charlie: the next is jackson pollock. eric: an extraordinary guy, he was trained by a midwest painter and started off doing reasonably

interesting work, but then he saw picasso's work and was interested in doing something more radical. he decided he wanted to paint in a completely new way. he took the canvas off the wall, put it on the floor, and started to splatter paint on it. he could walk around it and splatter in different directions. no one had ever done this before. this blew everybody away. de kooning who was both his rival and friend said that jackson pollock has really blown the conventional idea of a picture completely to hell. this is a completely radical depiction of a work of art. charlie: the next is mark rothko. eric: what is so interesting about all of these people, you can trace them as they move from configuration to abstract. roscoe said, look, everyone is paying attention to line inform,

what about color? he began to play with color. you have to really see it in real life, you can see there is depth to it. he has layers of paint, and the translucent layer on top. as you look at it you can really see the depth of the painting. i had a spiritual reaction, everyone has. this is extraordinary. the physical response someone has to something like this, i don't know if you've ever been to the rothko chapel, you see these paintings he made when he was quite depressed at the end of his life. you see practically nothing, and then afterward you see a little movement and you don't know if it is movement in the painting or movement in you.

charlie: the next one is alex catz. eric: not only did they influence each other and the world, they influenced each other. katz was very much influenced by the abstract expressionists. the paintings are completely flat, a very simple background. he is interested in depiction, not in conveying a message, he just wants you to get the beauty of the painting. he influenced warhol, who did repeated images as katz did. charlie: what about other aspects of art like music and writing, d.c. reductionism there?

give me an example. eric: for example, a composer simplifies -- simplified music great deal, and that was not merely from a perceptive point of view. that form of music has not caught on, but certainly people simplify music in a variety of ways to make it more attractive. charlie: you have said that art has made you a more sensitive human being. eric: absolutely, it enriches your life a great deal. you see people, you see scenes he would not formally experience, and it allows you to get more insight into yourself.

i don't know whether you finalists -- find this, the shallowest idea, one can get pleasure out of this. we look at an abstract painting that allows you to put your own ideas into it, i think it is very satisfying. the people who enjoy abstract art, i think they do it because it encourages the creative processes. chris riegel and government were a trio of the emmys artist -- artists. the problem they wanted to address was how you that the holder respond to our. he said the painting is not complete until the artist paints it in your response to it. no one had really put this so you thought about it. how does a beholder respond to a work of art? chris took that on. we see a painting differently.

each of us is undergoing a trade process. the beholder creates to a modest degree the image they see and that is why it is satisfying to the viewer. he was one of the ones who realized -- he was the one who said we should pay attention to bottom-up and top-down processing. looking at our from an experiment of psychological point of view. the next step is, and people are starting to do this, and i'm starting to explore this with colleagues, is to see what happens if you image a person while they are looking at these paintings. what is happening in their brain

is a shift from figure is him to abstraction. you ask them what their responses, and then you image their brains. as they are looking at a work of art. charlie: in a museum? eric: no, you take these images and project them. charlie: and what you see in the brain? eric: we haven't done it yet, this is what we hope to do. charlie: how much of a role does the subconscious play? eric: enormously. ernst call this a regression in the ego. we in creative elements when we are more relaxed allow unconscious processes to come to the fore. charlie: how you incorporate your sense of art into your

life? eric: i collect art, i have a very nice collection, and i get pleasure out of going to museums. charlie: have you always liked the new york abstract artists the most? eric: i wrote a book on this, i first started to collect -- charlie: they are pretty high. eric: they share features in common. collectiveke a because they influence each other, and these people influenced each other in enormously. not only that, but they had an interesting philosophy. they said look what happened in the second world war, there was the holocaust and the destruction of lives, the atomic bomb. how can one deal with the art that existed before in the face of these catastrophes? we have to look at the world a new.

that was a very bold thing. as result, they moved the art scene from vienna, from paris, to new york. charlie: here it is, "reductionism in art and brain science, bridging the two cultures." see you next time. ♪

mark: i'm mark crumpton. you are watching "bloomberg technology." let's check on first word news. hillary clinton challenging the fbi's new e-mail inquiry. at a rally in ohio, clinton says she understands the concerns people have overheard use of a personal e-mail server from which she again apologized. mrs. clinton: now, they apparently want to look at e-mails from one of my staffers and they should. i'm sure they will reach the same conclusion they did when they look at my e-mails in the last year. there is no case. mark: meantime, donald trump says hillary clinton is not a victim, the american people are