♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: the house of representatives approved the american health care act this afternoon. republican legislature plans to appeal and replace key parts of the affordable care act. the vote marks a significant victory for president trump and house republican leaders. their earlier efforts to repeal obamacare failed to unite conservatives and moderates within the house gop. most republicans have not yet read the legislation. assessment. without

joining me is jeff o'keefe and sarah clip. i am pleased to have both of them here. let me begin with you, tell me what happened? the trump administration, the president and other key leaders were saying they had the votes, and in fact, they did. was it difficult to pull this off? >> absolutely. they have been trying for weeks, did it todaythey by the skin of their teeth. the magic number was to get it over to 16, which they barely did. they called the vote shortly thereafter. no democrats voted for this. article conservatives don't think the bill went far enough. but they decided they had to do it on thursday and they did it.

and you know, it is a significant achievement, whether you are a fan of this president or republicans, or not. there is noted night at the house pulled off many thought they could not do. this is the first major legislative achievement for house speaker paul ryan, who has been on the job a little over 18 months. theourse,nly o signature achievement so far for president trump. and yet the senate remains, if you thought the house was difficult, let me introduce you to the upper chain. [laughter] >> the senate is going to be a struggle. you already have two republican senators who have come out today and said they do not support this bill. some of them are very concerned about medicaid. the american health care apple cut a lot of money from medicaid. we do not know exactly how much. it is probably in the

neighborhood of $800 billion, which is a huge concern to the senators in the states that expanded medicaid. this is a big victory for republicans. now the senate has to go through the fights that the house already did. there is discussion the house might start its own bill from scratch. this is one victory in an ongoing fight. now the focus turns to the senate and what they are going to do. charlie: there has been much discussion with the president as to what was in the bill and not in the bill. give us a sense of the key aspects of that conversation part of the debate over the last three or four days. what is in the bill and what is not in the bill? >> the president suggested this is a bill that protects people with pre-existing conditions. he said he wants to sign a bill that protects everybody with pre-existing conditions. the problem with those statements are there are actual provisions that are not good for someone who has a presenting

-- pre-existing condition. one of the ways that the conservative members of the house caucus were brought on board was by letting insurance companies in some states seek a waiver, charged the sick people higher premiums. this is really a nonnegotiable for the freedom caucus. there wanted to get rid of this "community rating." if this bill that the house passed goes through, if it is signed into law by president trump, google wants again -- we will once again have a system where people will have higher premiums. charlie: and sometimes high deductions, too. >> yes. charlie: when you look at this bill and who gave up what, who made the toughest compromise? >> it is more mainstream, moderate republicans who had to go along to get the concessions. these ads write themselves. democrats are in fantastic political position because now

they get to run campaign ads against republican senate are going to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from medicaid. if you got cancer, you will have to pay more for your health care. if your mother is sick, you have to pay for your health care, plus your own. all sorts of different kinds of ways they can spin this. we had a group interview with nancy pelosi, and she conceded saying -- it is much easier for us to talk about things and they are going to be taken away from americans as to when you are trying to explain what you are going to do to change a big law that really is becoming a settled issue for many americans, even if they have general concerns with it. i would say it is people who faced difficult reelections next are in the suburbs, certainly in the northeast, surly some for congressional districts and a handful of congressman in california that will face an appeal interesting and challenging time in the next few months explaining what they did, especially if that estimate from the congressional budget office, the nonpartisan counters comes back and demonstrate yet again

that tens of millions of people could lose, and this bill could potentially cost billions of dollars to the federal government. that was a big risk they took in having this vote, not knowing exactly the potential cost of it come and in many cases, nubbers conceding that they did not read the thing. charlie: why did the president feel like he had to do this now instead of going directly to tax reform? >> because you need a lot of the savings that republicans helped to generate from health care in.

-- from health care in order to help pay for an figure out tax reform that is the basic policy answer. but he also knows that if you cannot get health care, it may be impossible to get tax reform, and maybe very difficult to do anything else, and they needed to get to a point where they got a win. and house republicans said, we can government and come together on something as difficult as this was. it was a big step. rightfully today, wanted to celebrate that with house republicans and delayed his trip to new york to see the australian prime minister in order to do so because today is because the only big thing they have given him was supreme court justice neil gorsuch. they have a working they have a working relationship. we have a sense of how the white house and how the house can work together. depending on how the final health-care bill will look like, what exactly you would do to save money or to move money around, it would make doing tests are from a policy standpoint as well. charlie: sarah?

sarah: it would be a step forward, but we are seen that health care is becoming this all-consuming task. january, president trump wanted to sign and obamacare repeal bill in his first day of office. it is hard to see a timeline where republicans are both able to finish health care this year and go into tax reform given all of this work that has to be done. when you look at the legislative calendar, it seems hard, but not impossible to achieve both health care and tax reform, two major overhauls in the same year. >> charlie, there was a moment at the white house in the rose garden that the president said, maybe we should get rid of paul ryan, no, he is going to stay. the president did not deny that he had thought about it, and did nothing to suggest that he wants ryan to stay put and is happy with the work he has done. clearly, that relationship has been strained.

it would've been far worse if this had not happened both for ryan and for trump, but more importantly, for their relationship. if they were not able to work together, the republican party and their ability to govern would be seriously jeopardized. charlie: paul ryan has consistently said ever since obamacare was passed, republicans had said, we got to do something about it. they try to change it in every possible way, including a court challenge. here it is, finally having a republican president, not to this according to beenryan would have defying their own

constituency. >> it would've been an existential crisis. he said look, there are people in this chamber who are here because they vow to take this boat. if we do not take this vote, their entire political is extends -- political existence is called into question. they understand that much of their political success in recent years has been to rail against legislation like this. they needed to demonstrate that they tried very hard to get it done. >> one of the interesting dynamics is it seems like no one wants to be blamed for stopping this. you see in the first round of negotiations, the freedom caucus was a roadblock to passing the health bill. and it was the moderates who were in the hot seat. it is a most like this health care hot potato that no one really wants to drop, even if they are not thrilled with the final product. we will see that dynamic play out in the senate. there are a lot of hurdles in the senate towards passing legislation, but one of the things i definitely learned from this health process is that nobody at the end of the day wants to be the one with the finger pointed at them, saying

you are the one standing in the way of this campaign promise we made for seven years. that is going to be a motivating factor in the senate try to pass something. it does not look like the house was able to do this, but we were the place where it all fell apart. charlie: when you look at this bill, which many people have not -- [laughter] charlie: as a point has been made, how where is that that people are asked to vote about something that they do not know what is in there? sarah: it is incredibly rare. this is what happened with the affordable care act. republicans the manager they needed to be a score before you vote. it also seems quite risky for the republican members.

it has been mostly democrats chastising republicans for doing this. but we could see millions of people losing coverage. you cannot take back the fact he voted for it. it seems quite the risk republicans are taking decide to vote for a health care bill not knowing who was covered in how much a cost. charlie: they can go to their constituents and said, they did it. we said we about to repeal and replace obamacare and we did it. >> we don't know for certain, charlie, that they have. the way that it is written, it is not a wholesale replacement of the affordable care act. it is a conservative sweeping rewrite, but elements of the law will still be there. if you are one of those ardent conservatives who wanted to see completely wiped clean and your conservative, you won't the happy. if they go on a week long recess, that is underway, if they get asked by someone at the grocery store at a town hall meeting next week, what is really in this thing? and they struggled to answer, even the republican supporters would wonder, was that the best thing to do? but it shows you they were

willing to put all of that at risk and still hold a vote because they understood that the consequence of dragging it out even longer and possibly fumbling the ball yet again was worse than taking the boat now starting this process and taking it over to the senate. charlie: so, is it greater than 50/50 that the republicans will be able to vote in the house and senate, critical signed by the president? [laughter] charlie: that will be a republican act of health care? sarah: i think it is an uphill battle, but the desire to have something is very strong. osay,, i was about t

given republicans control the senate, the house, and the white house, it would be hard to say that we were not -- that we were not able to get this done. >> and they hold 52 seats. the question will be whether they get at least 51 because there is no democrat who plans to vote with them. it was described to me by democratic aides yesterday, we are sitting on our hands watching republicans deal with this. charlie: ed and sarah, thank you. we will be right back. stay with us. ♪ ♪

♪ charlie: 23 years ago, three self-described hipsters created

montreal-based magazine, which could be developed a reputation for bold, provocative reporting. it was called "vice." today it is valued at nearly $5 billion. along the way, the company has eschewed many of the trappings of traditional news media and immersive journalism. it is then called hard news with an edge. vice news tonight was launched. george smith is the founder and a host of their with the documentary series on hbo. and josh is the executive vice president of news executive producer of vice news tonight. i am pleased to have them both back on this program.

tell me "vice media" is, as if i did not know. >> we started the magazine and montreal, and then we came down here as the first dot com revolution and then moved to brooklyn and started being a digital company. we were the first to do online video and native advertising and all that good stuff. and then got bigger and bigger and grew internationally. now we are in 80 countries and a tv networks. have online. we have mobile. haveve agencies, we record lables. charlie: it is a media company? that at about 5 billion? >> last year. [laughter] charlie: your show is about hellbent libertarianism? >> yeah. i was lucky that i got to spend time with david.

thatie: we loved him on show. >> i loved him. we met when he was shooting page one and we butted heads in the making really good friends. i remember when they called me, they said if we get chain, will you come to dublin for round two? we said sure. it was a lovefest. they sum up all these irish musicians -- they sent up all these irish musicians and we danced around this crazy castle together. but he was one of the best. he called it right. we are no rules, non-paradigm, nonpolitical. charlie: is it news or entertainment? >> it is news, but it is entertaining news.

i think that, you know, one of the things, to speak of reviews or critiques, the first review of vice news is that new york times said -- and i am paraphrasing, but it is hipsters with skinny jeans and tattoos high-fiving in war zones. everybody was bummed but i said look, they are not saying this stuff is not greater good news, they are saying we look different from them, and if we look different from them, guess what? that is our audience. those of the millennial. so you can have the older generation, but we will take the younger generation. and if you're making fun of the way we dress, it is a win. charlie: you have the hbo series, then you decided you wanted to come up with a nightly presentation. >> it was a combination. charlie: he said it was his idea and that it was not a combination. [laughter]

>> richard loves the news that we create for hbo. and so, he loves what we do for hbo and we love being on hbo. it is a great platform for us. and when he came to us and said, we want to do this all the time and we want to do it nightly, and it was a big conundrum because we did not want the voice of god or hosts, or to look like other news. so we had to reinvent news, which is hard to do. so i got sick of actually being beaten by this guy at all the awards shows every year when he was at bloomberg. we would always be up for best magazine and he would win it. [laughter]

larry: i know, i get the feeling. yes, yes. >> so when we wanted someone with a creative vision to say, i'm going to reinvent news, which is hard to do because it has to be recognizable enough to call it news, but different enough so we are not derivative of anything else. charlie: you have been in time magazine and really made bloomberg businessweek a magazine. you had no trepidation about this because when you were leaving, and tons of people wanted you to come. why was this right for you? >> it was a combination of things. i like solving problems in the naughtier the problem, the more interested i am. but what i learned over the years and i have been blessed with having good patrons, is that you need support because you are not going to get it right the first time out. when you are taking on a big media problem, like how you get people to watch something that has not changed in 60 years, on the one hand, there was shane

who was the right kind of media rogue and saying we're going to do it -- we will figure it out. and it was expressing the kind of commitment that you need and the insistence on quality. i felt safe because jumping into the most competitive landscape, delivering news over the air, is not a safe thing, but i like for all the things i was interested in, you could be smart, get permission to experiment, and that is a dream. that is what you want to be able to do. charlie: what are the elements of the nightly show? josh: when shane and i first spoke of this and i first said this to him and richard, i said, nobody needs this, right? the media has changed so much. if you are an engaged news consumer, you are getting it all day -- on your phone, over the radio, watching tv. nobody needs it to just tell you what happened. what happened is pretty obvious. if you are going to do this, you have to make people want it by seducing them. you have to give them something a little familiar. we are unconventional in many, many ways.

the thing we are very conventional about is, you watch a show, you're going to hear a lot about what happened in the world today and you understand it better. that is it losing value proposition, but from there, we looked at what conventional news delivered. we saw that it is the only news product where it is on at the same time. it has the same format, which is one person behind a desk. oftentimes, they are doing the same kinds of stories. let's make the thing we want to make. the visual inspiration in some ways was saturday night live on the one hand, sesame street on the other. funnycause we want to be or childish but you go to yourday nigh live becuase go too laugh and you

sesame street educate your kids. no matter what the problem there are trying to solve, they have moves. saturday night live does it with shorts, commercial spoofs, they have ways to package all of those ideas. sesame street is sometimes an ethical dilemma and the characters involved. the first to talk about was having moods. at a desk. anchor as good as we are at immersive journalism, we need more than that. we need data that moves on screen. animation. one of the reasons people have fallen out of favor with tv news is that if you do not have footage, you do not have a story. charlie: that is interesting you say that.

i will add fox to it. they all reach up to 5 million viewers a night. >> we had the youngest audience according to nielsen of any new show on the cable networks. there is some consistency, obviously. charlie: 12 and 13? [laughter] josh: i'm sure they would be thrilled if it was. charlie: what is the personality? it is not an anchor or a voiceover. >> it is a mix. your audience is tracking stores outside of your news program in bringing context to it. they are going to put up with some longer form storytelling. we do packages that are sometimes anywhere from four to 12 minutes. >> i think if you look at the numbers, then you say ok, hbo is in 30 million homes. the networks are in full distribution. b, if you look at some of the

top news shows that are 200,000, 300,000 --the fact we're doing 500,000 off the bat and we're the number one digital for hbo is fantastic. if you combine the nightly and the weekly, we are doing somewhere north of 5 million ourselves. so, now it is video on demand. apples-to-apples but the numbers are very similar. charlie: what is the difference between what you are doing and what he is doing? >> he does all the work and he will take me out to lunch. [laughter]

>> i work on some of the longer tale stuff and more interviews. i like to get into the field and should, but i don't have a lot of time. charlie: you are an executive as well as being on-air. >> the weekly is my baby, but josh is on weekly and on specials and i am a nightly. charlie: when is that show on, vice? >> friday nights. charlie: take a look at this clip featuring you reporting from the north sea on the cause of climate change. here it is. ♪ >> we just landed here in the north sea, one of the biggest oil and gas platforms in the world. we are talking to a company who has admitted climate change is real and supported the gop protocol -- they support of the protocol. we are going to see how big oil and gas can do something to reduce emissions.

♪ clip]ideo charlie: you see what i see there is reporting, and i see a lot of video, well done. and i hear a lot of music. [laughter] >> that story is actually about -- there is a lawsuit against exxon that is being put forth by a number of attorneys general in america same that they knew about climate change, yet spent they developed to say that it wasn't. a lot of the same scientist that did research into tobacco did the same for big oil. we were talking to a lot of lawyers about the lawsuit, which isn't great tv. so we went and said norway is interesting because they are progressive government, yet, they are the biggest oil and natural gas producers saying yes, climate change is happening because of oil and gas and we have to do something about that

so we are doing carbon capture. all of those rigs are actually energy coming from hydro. so to have an oil company tell fantastic.as and they are on these platforms. back in the 1980's, the elevated the platforms eight to 12 feet. we had to get them insured for many years they were raising everything by eight feet and now it comes about that that is the level of sea level rise and so it was sort of a gotcha moment. charlie: you shoot and broadcast the same night? >> yes. charlie: do you have to do that or can you package stuff and decide? >> we have longer lead stuff we invest a bunch of time in. we just, you know, on the show last week we did a piece we

started shooting really in december about gang violence in chicago. takes a long time. but we are oftentimes really just cutting in the control room and we go live two or three nights a week meaning we feed live to hbo and what you're seeing has just been dispatched. we're trying to strike this balance. we need to use that time to get as much up to date stuff into the show. we're going to do it. we also know that like planning, preparation, long-term story telling is our hallmark. we're blending those two things. charlie: you said somewhere story selection is about asking whether we can add value. we don't just want to do another story then another. >> yeah. look, i am very cognizant as an avid news consumer. i'm tracking a lot of stuff all day. if you're just going to tell somebody something, and i can find that information out in a bunch of different places, you haven't distinguished yourself at all. one the ways this has come up for us is the election of donald trump has been like a volcano and there is lava everywhere. a lot of times that's trump's tweets, it's other things. we i think for the first week or so like a lot of newsrooms, we were just tearing up line-ups all day long. there is so much stuff going on. i think what we discovered was that we were, for that period, really doing things that were not as value added as we ought

to be doing. we decided to step back. if people already know he tweeted the media is the enemy to people, what is the point of adding more to that outrage? what can we actually do with our 30 minutes a night that is going to distinguish us? we're really kind of protecting that time. if we overlap with somebody else, we better overlap for a good reason. we better have something

different and additive. there are so many choices. we're new. we look different. use that. charlie: this is for both of you. what's the profile of the people who watch your show or they're all your shows. shane: yeah. young, affluent, diverse. charlie: all that. but have they been news watchers? have they been news watchers or are they people simply turned off by news because they were tired of it and thought it was boring and didn't believe in appointment television or anything like that? shane: we have both. josh: a little from column a and a little from column b. we make this nightly show, slave away, get it to 7:30, push it out, and one of the first things we heard from hbo is a lot of people binge watching and would save up a couple episodes and binge-watch it which is

interesting behavior for a news show. not one we've heard of before. charlie: people all the time come up to me and say i devote my saturday mornings to watching your shows. i take five hours and go through it and what i like, i'll watch, and what i don't, you know, i skip right through it. josh: it gives you more liberty because it allows you the extra day of consideration to do something you might not have been able to do if you're just responding to deadlines. it is interesting our users want us in the present tense. they are not expecting us to tell them the future. they don't necessarily demand that everything we do be up to date provided we keep adding value to it. shane: on the audience, when you talk about millennials, 18 to 34, 18 is much different than 34. so we have people who have been disenfranchised by main stream media and we have people who -- charlie: disenfranchised by main stream media meaning what? shane: they don't feel it speaks to them or sl have been scandals. so basically they're saying i'm going to these guys over here. then we have other, younger kids who have come up because their older brothers or sisters or whoever were watching "vice" they sort of have been reared on "vice news" so we're their go-to on the younger edge of it. but, and then there are people who compare us to all the other sort of main stream media and say they do stuff that's not on the news cycle or they go behind it. charlie: you know, during, when john stewart was at the helm for the daily show everybody was saying, this is not really good. that is a comedy show, not a

news show, and john would be first to tell you that. it was about satire but at the same time the story you always heard was is it good or bad that so many young people, this is the only way they get news. they watch the daily show. josh: i think it's good. shane: i think it's good because they're getting news. charlie: then john's show, news as much as -- josh: well, issues. shane: he was talking about issues. he was popularizing it. josh: you also can't enjoy it unless you know the news. that is the thing about that critique. charlie: that is a good point. josh: otherwise all the references pass you. so that was a kind of like, i believe an underestimation of that audience in the same way i think our audience is a little bit under estimated, too. you can't enjoy a 12-minute piece about gang violence in chicago unless you come to it prepared. and have a little bit of a knowledge. charlie: i think you said somewhere, too, "vice" doesn't assume that young people don't care about news.

they assume that they do. it's presented to them in a way that is part of who they are and their own sort of lifestyle d.n.a. experiences. josh: one of the things in business news where i was for six years, that you sort of forget, is people actually want to feel something when they watch the news. you know, you mentioned the music under shane's piece. one of the things that -- one the things i have learned in part from shane and from spike jones and others is that people don't mind feeling something while they're learning something. if you can show them a great character, move them, that's okay. and so i think a lot of our audience comes, they may not be expecting it but i think that is the reward if they're careful watchers that they met someone they can remember and attach to that issue. charlie: where is it going? what is your trajectory? shane: for news or the company? charlie: both. start with the company. shane: well, we started when i first came to talk to you.

we were sort of 1 of 10. then we were 1 of 4. now we're 1 of 1, the largest new media company in the world. we want to take the "new" out and be the largest media company. charlie: i heard everybody was running out to brooklyn. i thought i better find out what's going on. i went out there. shane: yeah. well, everything is going on out there. that's the hub. charlie: okay. so the trajectory is what, though? for the company. shane: for the company, show, for the next two years it's boring. we go into a country, we launch the tv network. we push all that into mobile. we launch our studios. then we go to the next country. it's just bang, bang, bang, launching all of our platforms in 80 countries. the big question isn't what we do over the next two years, which is just expand, expand, expand, it is what do we do after that? because you have "vice" on hbo. you have, you know, "vice" on sky. you have "vice" on times india. at some point you have to go direct to consumer.

and i think that is where everything is going. charlie: when? shane: well now, i think if you -- charlie: when will it be predominant? shane: i think we are seeing it beginning. netflix. obviously the success there, success with amazon. now apple is signaling they're going to enter the fray. hulu. so it's going to be -- and then you're having skinny bundles and everything going to spoke so what is going to happen is you're going to have, let's say, 30 things that you pay for and some of them will be over the top and some will be old school tv but it's happening today. the fact that at&t is buying time warner is because of that. because that is what they have to drive data which is video. charlie: good luck. josh: thank you. great to see you. charlie: back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

♪ charlie: in 2002 tabitha soren began photographing a group of minor league draft picks for the oakland a's. for the next 15 years, tabitha

soren captured the lives of players working to achieve their dreams of playing in the big show and the ones that never made it. the photos and the stories behind them are captured in her new book. it is called "fantasy life: baseball and the american dream." she also has a new project called "surface tension" opening this month in san francisco. i am pleased to have her back at this table. welcome, welcome. tabitha: thank you. charlie: where have you been? tabitha: well, i have been following some baseball players, but in that 15 years i also had three children, got married, and i sort of disappeared from television. charlie: your husband occasionally stops by to tell us about his latest magnus opus. tabitha: true. that's right. so i haven't always been a baseball fan. but when my husband michael lewis wrote "money ball" after the reporting was done he still really wanted to continue to hang out with billy bean so he dragged me to spring training in 2003. you know how you make those compromises in relationships, and when i got there i was really happy that i went, because i met 21 guys from the 2002 draft class at their very first spring training and i felt as an artist, how often do you get to meet a whole group of

people embarking on the exact same journey at the exact same time? and their faces were so full of hopefulness and purpose that i had a hard time figuring out, you know, how fast to get started. so, when i met these players i actually assumed they were just on their way to the major leagues. that it was inevitable that they would get there, and i had to learn through hanging out with them for a long period of time that, really, only 6% of them get there. and i actually figured out eventually i would -- i assumed i would fall in love with baseball like all of the fanatics in the stands. and it never really happened. but what the project turned into was much more about resilience and striving and what baseball says about american culture, because these guys know only 6% of them get there, but they're pushing, pushing, pushing anyway. and i felt like it's not just professional athletes who are driving themselves at that speed and with that endurance and risking injuries and leaving college. i feel like a lot of americans push themselves that hard.

charlie: these photographs are linked by stories from dave eggers. tabitha: that's right. we are both from the bay area and he is a very generous soul as i'm sure you must know. so when he found out i was doing this, he asked if he could help. i said, why don't you write one of those art essays at the beginning of the art book? he said, tabitha, nobody reads those stupid things. i don't want to write something nobody is going to read. so he wrote a short story instead, which i never would have asked dave eggers to write a short story for me, but he did. he is incredibly prolific. i feel very lucky. charlie: there's a movie, is it "the circle?" tabitha: yes. can't keep up with him. his wife is no slouch either. charlie: let's talk about the pictures then come back and find out whatever happened to you. tabitha: i'm still here. charlie: yes you are. let's look at the first one. tell me what the photographer saw here. tabitha: so that is the stockton ports dugout in stockton, california. they're a minor league affiliate of the oakland a's.

and i felt like that picture encapsulated sort of the daily routine, the groundhog day like grind of people being bored, other people being upset. and apperture publishing helped me take 15 years of work and pare it down into this visual, alternate reality of the long bus rides, cramped motel rooms, injuries, friendships --. charlie: all built on a hope. tabitha: well, you have to believe you're going to make it or you won't. we can't all be derek jeter. i think they know that logically at some point, but if you don't believe you're going to be, if you don't believe you're the person who is going to win the game, get the oscar, go from mail room to board room, as an american we're really wrapped up in what i think is a slightly false premise, that if you have a dream and you work hard, success is within anyone's reach.

i think that's not logical. most people know it's not logical. in this case and in a lot of cases where you're trying to be the exception, you're trying to be number one, it's the dream that matters. charlie: let's look at the second picture. tabitha: the picture on the left is ben fritz in a pool during spring training. it is very hot as you know, so they would cool off in the pool. the reason i like it is that's what you see on the surface, but what it means to me is that you can take the personal and go universal with this. we are all trying to stay afloat. i think that you can't tell whether he's sinking or whether he's floating. looks like an under water super hero. he is a guy who showed up at spring training. everyone assumed he was going to make it. he showed up injured. he had surgery. he got another injury. he kept going and pushing and pushing and i just feel like that's what we all do. we learn resilience that way. that's derek jeter at his last home game. charlie: number two. yes.

tabitha: so he is the exception to the rule. charlie: because of supreme talent or because of something else? tabitha: i think all of it. i think lack of injuries. i mean, injuries play a huge part in derailing these people. charlie: okay. look at the next slide. tabitha: this is clinton iowa. and it's so hot there that they have showers attached to the outside. so probably most of the photographers were inside the stadium taking pictures of the game and i probably got bored and wandered outside and i caught this young man, who probably plays little league and probably idolizes the people on the field, taking a break. charlie: what am i looking at? tabitha: this is oakland coliseum. they have an annual night where they not only explode fireworks but let all fans down on field. this is the case where i feel like art is really an antidote

to the busy, over scheduled lives we all lead. in this case i wasn't interested in the fireworks. i was interested in what happened after, just like the name that these guys are making for themselves within baseball is less interesting to me than how they rebuild their identity afterwards. charlie: they call it the night on the green. tabitha: yep. charlie: this is rain. tabitha: it was a torrential downpour when i arrived to shoot one of my players who was now in the independent league, which is basically he'd been released. and it was so stormy outside. i didn't feel safe carrying my equipment. so i stayed in the car and my breath fogged up the window. charlie: this is from surface tension. tell me what surface tension is. tabitha: so the last picture we saw is a harbinger of this next project. i like it so much because the aesthetics from the stadium shot in the rain really relates to this new work. i'm taking -- letting people use my ipad and i'm using the ipad and i let the dirt and grime and fingerprints build up and then i

go into the history and grab a link that i have looked at and pull it up and then i shoot it with an 8 x 10 view camera, one of those very old cameras that you put the black hood over you so that the negative is the -- is this thick. i'm using an analog process to shoot a digital project. it's something that i think speaks to the struggle of forces within our heads, while we're trying to deal with e-mail and texts and various screens in our lives, i feel like technology has created a lot of tension and distraction in our heads. and this visually gets at that. charlie: when did you decide you wanted to be a photographer? tabitha: well, i have always taken pictures. my dad was in the military, so i took pictures all the time as sort of a memory bank.

they were not interesting pictures. it was a catalog basically. my bed, the rug, my desk, outside of the house. we moved so often that i would forget. and once i got very successful in television, i felt like the work i was doing was getting more and more main stream. the higher i rose, the more watered down it got, and the less agency i had over the creative process. so for me, art was the solution to that. i feel like i can get to a truth in the work, but it's less of a who, what, when, where, and why, and more of an emotional truth. there is more room for subtle and nuance, which is what i was looking for. it's hard to cram that into a three-minute news segment. charlie: you couldn't have the creative thrill that you have now? tabitha: it wasn't quite as focused as that, but, yes. eventually.

i mean, the other thing is that i've got kind of a dark side. nobody ever tells me to smile in the art world. so if i want to explore panic and dread and anxiety and the conflict of mental turbulence i feel in managing all my devices, then, you know, they're interested. charlie: do you miss it at all? tabitha: no, not really. the only thing i miss is sort of being at the center of politics or current events. but i think that -- charlie: that is the point of it all. tabitha: well, but there is a lot of other work you have to do in addition. i did tons of stories that weren't that important. because it was my job. it's nice to be able to explore things that occurred in a way that's never been done. so these images are very much talking about how the world is getting more visual than verbal and as a very verbal person i think it's interesting that, you know, l.o.l. is a funny kind of laugh and my daughter sent me a jpeg air kiss to say good night.

she didn't even think to call me. that's, you know, obviously a funny kind of kiss, but i think that the -- we are substituting a lot of intimacy with these devices. i don't think we know what effect they're having on us. i can think of a ton of great things technology affords me as an artist and as a journalist and the amount of research and the history you have access to, everything. but i don't think that we are very good at sort of anticipating the effect of technology on us even as --. charlie: in terms of robbing us of some kind of intimacy and personal communication? just coming together as human beings? tabitha: there is certainly that, but in addition, i think that there is a -- we don't anticipate the effect it's going to have on us even if it incarnates our wishes and our pathology. it's not just screens. can you think of anything more

pathological than nuclear weapons? that is a technology, too. we didn't really anticipate the problems that would occur with building something like that. charlie: one of the interesting things about technology is that it's not just in the hands of good people. it's in the hands of bad people, too. tabitha: sure. so i would also say that -- so you have this grime, this residue. when we space out on your computer, how many times have you been managing a bunch of different windows and your phone and then it's time to go. whatever the deadline is. and you have no idea what you've been doing the last three hours. time has disappeared. these fingerprints and grime are sort of a map of what you've been up to. i love the idea that photography can show you what would otherwise be invisible. charlie: that's julian assange, right? tabitha: yes. charlie: that's come from a

video of him? tabitha: yeah. i froze a video of him walking into a ted talk or something. so he, basically any time you have him in your work, you are dealing with issues of privacy and surveillance and i think that i -- i needed to have each one of the pictures connect to some aspect of the internet that we all deal with and, certainly, he belongs in there. charlie: the next one is your daughter sending a virtual good night kiss. this is what you were referring to, right? tabitha: that's right. charlie: she didn't call you up and say, mom i love you, just want to say good night. she just sent you this. tabitha: that's right. so the digital substrate under the analog fingerprints is very obvious because the negative is so large. and i do think the world is becoming more visual than verbal. she transacts most of her social relationships just by sending manipulated pictures back and forth. very rarely do they have a phone call or a text. charlie: what do you think it's doing to her? tabitha: i sound too old if i answer that question i'm afraid. charlie: i want to know.

♪ tabitha: i feel like there is a lack of social development that happens by being able to handle some of the awkward moments that a face-to-face encounter requires. charlie: how old is your daughter? tabitha: this one is 15. i have two. charlie: both daughters. how many children do you have? tabitha: i have three children. charlie: michael is crazy for baseball. tabitha: yes. charlie: and he coaches little league. tabitha: that's right. charlie: and he's obsessed by that, too. tabitha: yeah. they make art with me. a lot of these fingerprints are my 10-year-old son playing video games. his hands are fantastic, because they sweat so they leave these heavy duty drifts and easy things to focus on. charlie: all right. next slide. tabitha: one of the things i'm trying to get the project to address is us confusing the perfection of these devices with perfection of ourselves. i feel like the apple designers or any designer has made this screen to be perfectly minimal. it's shiny. it's totally smooth.

it's meant to resist oil. i am reminding viewers with all of these markings, with our saliva and ourur oil, that, you know, our humanity is very messy. and i don't think we should feel physically inferior or i don't think we should deny that part of ourselves even as we're dealing with all of this technology. it's kind of beautiful in the end. charlie: "fantasy life" was published april 1, right? tabitha: that's right. charlie: and surface tension begins exhibitions -- tabitha: this saturday in san francisco. and then it moves to los angeles in june. charlie: congratulations. tabitha: thank you very much. charlie: great to have you here. tabitha: nice to see you again. charlie: thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. oliver: i'm oliver renick. carol: facebook's image for a future. and rupaul's drag economy, that's a fun story. oliver: all of that ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪