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tv   Book TV  CSPAN  September 5, 2009 7:00pm-9:00pm EDT

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urnalism award in 1993. he is a columnist with "the washington post." for more information about the authorsnd books featured on encore but nuncius sucss of air fare recently renovated web site, booktv.org hinliffe conniff booktv if a series. you will find encore booknotes .. pas
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i was speaking to give a dissenting voice on the legacy of darwin an there's a lot of interest in darwin and his legacy this year, it is the 200 anniversary of darwin's birth, the 1 fiftieth anniversary of the origin of species that is coming up later in the year in november. carbon is so big that he is even on the money, we have the queen on one side of the0 pound notes and charles on the back. around the world with is anniversary there is the question aboutis legacy, what has our when left us, what do we klow because of carbon that we didn't know before. quite typically thenswer to that question is, darwin refuted the design arguments, gave us the idea of evolution, the understanding of the mechanism
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of natural selection but according to many intellectual historians, many biologists, darwinas principally important because he refuted the old classical argument of design. one of the past presidents of the aaas,ut it this way, the functional design of organisms and their features would seem to argue for the existence of a designer. it was darwin's greatest accomplishment to show the directive organization of living beings cane explained as being a result of aatural process, natural selection, without any need, acting on random mutation, without any need to resort to a creator or any other external agent. recently he said darwin gave us design without the designer. that idea is picked up in the works of richard dawkins, the
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foremost spokesman for modern neo darwinism, saying in his classic work the blind watchmaker, biology is the stu of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. i am an old college pross d it is hard not to want to call on people. if i do, forgive me but i want to offer a quiz for anyone who can come up with the key word in this quotation. obviously appearance. the darwian view is things look as though they were designed but they weren't design because there is a purely on directed, and guidance mechanism aimed natural selection ting on random variations that can produce the pearance or illusion of design. thout that mechanism of natural selection being guided or directed in any way that was darwin's key idea, natural selecon being the ia of random variations in a
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population and differential reproduction. let's put that idea of darwin's in context. what he was trying to show was all the living forms that have arisenince the very beginning of life were produced by a purely and directed natural process, the process of natural selection. he suggested all these fms to dead suggested by the topf the tree, birds, mammals, of various nds, ourselvs, and all of those forms eventually could be traced back, descended by the power of natural lection om originally one or very few simple forms. that is his theory, it sometimes called biological evolution, what darwin was attempting to do
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was explain allhe forms we have today from simpler pre-existing forms. but darwin did not answer a fuamental question, a more fundamental question, didn't even address it. that was the question of the origin of the very first life, the form of life represented by the base of t tree or the trunk. to get life ing, somehow simple chemicals have to be converted into a living cell. darwin address that topic as the lecture proceeds, in 150 years, subsequent generations of scientists who have addresseit hasn't been able to solve the mystery of the first life either. there is a question today in the scientific literature and among many of my colleagues abouthe deficiency of darwin's theory, getting from that first life to all the living forms we see today.
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for the purposes of argument i will set that question aside in this lecture as i have done in my focus on more fundamental question, the question of t origin of the first life. can that very first life be explained as the result of a purely undirected process such that any appearance of desne fi in for example the first living cell can be safely assumed to be an illusion or is there evidence of actual design? is designed merely apparent or is there actual intelligent design, that is the question -- and darwin's time, scientists were not concerned about this. theres a general materialistic turn in sciencin the late nineteenth century with attempt to explain all major phenomenon by reference to matter in motion, the law of nature. even though there wasn't a rmal pherae of the origin of
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thfirst life scientists were nkt very concerned about not havi such a theory, i am lking about materialistic reorieed evolutionary biologists because they assumed the cell was extremel simple. it didn't seem it was going to be difficult to produce an explanation for the origin of the first cell because the cell was thought tbe something like a blob of jell-o which could be produced by a few simple inedients, chemical ingredients reacting withach other with one or two simple reactions. i love the quote on the seen behind me because it makes me feel that some large, with the benefit of hindsight, all that has been discovered, the last 110 years in fields like molecular and cell biology. thomas henry huxley, darwin's famous protagonists, he says the
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cell is a simple a homogeneous globule of plasm. thy felt it looked like something that a few checal reactions could produce. the essence of lifeas this substance on the inside of the cell membrane called protoplasm. l of that changed, at first gradually, at the turn of the century as we began to learn more about proteins and metabolism but dramatically in the 1950s to 1960s during the period of time called the molecular biological revolution, the key discovery in this period of time, one of the key discoveries was the discovery by watson and crick of the structure of the dna mocule, the famous double helix, most of
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us are vy familiar, the double helix is a cultural icon, we see it onews reports, we know that crilinals are convicted because of dna evidence, there are biotech firms that are investigating dna and jeans, we arvery familiar with dna, but at the same time there's something profoundly mysterious abouthis molecule that we never really come to grips with and that iwhat my book is abt. one way to think of it is to think o something else, another one of the brilliant discoveries of francis crick, he was a brilliant english physicist turned biologist, a coatbreaker in world war ii involved in breaking the ultimate code, th digital code stored in e dna molecule. for 57 he proposed an amplification of the work tt he and watson had done in 1953,
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that was his so-calledequence hypophysis. according to which the four chemicals the inside ofhe spine of the dna molecule, reprented with some letters, those four, he proposed those four chemicals called bases function ectly like alphabetic characters in a written language or digital characters in a machine code. set aside the familiarity with the subject by high school biology, you have to realize we all have to realize this is an absolutely sing hypothesis which was confirmed in a series of discoveries over the next ten to 15 years during this revolution in molecular biology. what was discovered was this, the four chemicals that function as characters, direct the production of proteins and the prein machines that keep the
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cell alive. the way this works inside a cell is the arrangements dictate because the instrtions for arranging the constituent parts of proteins called amino acids. here i break for a visual aid. some of you have seen a version this talk before, and are getting frightened eyes this amino acid talk but i will break this down for you. these are snap blocks on the box from which i sold them, ages 2 to 4, a child's toy that illustrates something important about h molecular biology works. proteins are like the tool box of a cel and they are formed fr amino acids which are represented with these. proteins have specific, three dimensional shapes th allow
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them in a hand inlove fashion perform crical functions inside the cell. just as the toolox in the garage, they have are hammer and a saw and a wrench and a set of pliers and each point of those tools has a relationship between form and function, the shape of the toolbar determines what kind of job it can do, the same retionship that exists the shape of a protein and the jobs it can do in the cell. but the shape the protein adopts, here are some pictes off of t internet of the intricate 3-dimensional shapes proteins have, those shapes are determined in large pt by the interaction between these amino acids, each of these amino acids have what are called side chains sticking off of the backbone, and a technical term, or the interactions between those
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chains set in place a constellation of forces that cause different shapes to form and turn against, responsible for the function proteins can perform. heres an example of a protein, an enzyme prein that performs, breaks apa the two part sugar molecule, it is cut out in the middle part of the slide, shows the hand in glove f between the active and the protein and the two part sugar that looks like a barbell. th is a perfect hand in glove fit tha responsible bor the breaking the enzyme accomplishes and this is typical of all oteins, they perform the exisite three dimensional specificity. the y queson in biology i how does that specificity arise. we now know the specificity of
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shaped in the protein derived from the specificityf sequence in amino acids which in turn arise from the specificity of seence, spic arrangements, the information, the instructions, the digital code stored along the spine of the dna molecule. that is what i call the dna and the glove. i will explain in a minute why i call that an inner glow. it might be helul cause - to have additionalepresention of what the instruction, the digital code in dna does in the molecule or within the cell. we now know that. a second, pressed the button and you will see an animation and it will first show you t digital code represented symbolically along t spine of the dna molecule and you will see a lot of sff start to have a real fast, and what you will see is the dna molecule will be separated by a large protein complex that will open a
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molecule and expose it for copying and you will see a large, another large proin complex, the cell's copy machine which will come in and attach itself to the dna and we will see that spit out a single strand of the d information which will go out and eventually direct the production of the protein in the protein machine. i will show this animation starting with the digital code on the d and a. here we see the dna and digital code represented graphically along the spine, now we see this protein complex come and attach itself. for the dna strand to be happy.
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, and added to form this the copy, completed, and it is going to traport it out to the clear cplex which is an information, call it is going t thread in, the message transcript is read, and push through, it is going to provide instructions, the chain of amin acids you can s along the
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bottom and the assembly process, the amino acids are linked up, and a three letter word in the genetic message. now we see theide those of and at the bottom, the growing protein chain, the messenger trscript at the top, begins unfoldingrocess, it is oen shepherded out to something with a rrel shaped protein that will cause it to full even more specicity called a chaperone. the animators here in a second is going to show us when the protein comes into the final confirmation, right up there for us. there we go. the door opens and out it goes to the outer cytoplasm and into the cell where it will do its job, you will see the animator has done a lely job bringin
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to life thillian intricacy inside the cell. that is what w are talking about when we talk about what dnas. it directs the assembly instructions, assembly instructions that direct protein synthesis and wonderful machines at the protein is made of. i call this the dna and the glove. what is the dna and igne? is not theuestion of the structure of dna. watson and crick solve tt problem in 1953. the first line of my ok is when watson and crick elucidated the ructure of t dna molecules they solved one mystery but created another. the mystery is not the mystery of structure of dna, not even the mystery of where blogical information reside, we now know where at least some of the information of living organisms reside, it resides along the dna molele. a d unit but, neither of the
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dna in it by is the mystery of what the information in dna does. we have a very good handle on that, we saw an animation of it, perhaps a little simplified of gene expression or protein synthesis. the dna unit law is something more fundamental, the mystery of the origin of the information on the dna molule. that mystery is intimately connected with another, very profound and long standing history, the origin of life. of leading german origin life biochemist says the problem of the origin of life is basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological inrmation. the origin of biological information. it is easy to see the origin of information is so intimately
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connected. i used to act my students, if you want to give your computer a new function, maybe take got it. there are better computers than anyone ove30. you have to give it new code, new programming. the same is true in life. if you want t build a new organism from a p-existing organism, what did bill the new organ or structure and build a new molecular machine, informion is ruired. proteins @re required and that means new information. more fundaally, if you want to build a life in the first place you need information which we know runs the show in biology, the information in dna, requires that information, that is the d and a a enigma, the mystery of the orin of the information necessary to produce theirst life. for ingenious andcientists in
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the group, one clarifying point might be helpful. there a mathetical understanding and description of informatioproved by the mathematician claude shannon, this is one of the simpler forms of one of his equations. mathematicallyinformation is inversely related to probability. the more improbable the sequence of characters is the more information it conveys. but shannon himself pointed out, there's a limit tohe mass matt mahon-but-mathematical concept of information. his formf analysis cannot help us capture the distinction between these two sequences, a seence on top is very improbable, irobable arrangement of characters, has a large, incalcuble amount of information or information carrying capacity. the sequence on the bottom is also very improbable and therefore has a lot of informatinn but has something else, an extra elements, it has
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a specificity of arrangement that enables that suence to convey functional information. it performs a communications function. the bottom string is specified information or ecified complexity where the top string is nearlcomplex or has snnon inforeation. whene talk about the dna in a glut, thkind of information that is necessary to get life going is important to recognize we are talking about specified information, functionally specified information where the arrangement othe characters matter francis crick again, the gius on the cutting edge in the late 1950s, was very cle to clarify this from the beginning, the biological revolution. by iormation informaon means the preciseetermination of sequence either of the bases in
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the nucleic acid, dna or rna or the amino acid in the protein. we talk about biological information that needs to be explaine to understand the origin of life, we are talking about specified, functionally specified information, not really shannon information improbability. i first encountered the dna in it tha a conference in 1985. therwere several scientists i had come tonow, oneas charles fax to new just published a boo called the mystery of life's origin. at this conference, he shared the critique that he provided in s book of ferias of a chemical orig of life, aexhaustive
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critique. nearly everyone,. i became fascinated with that question because i had bee under the impression, having gone through two sence degrees, the evolutionary biologists have all the questions sewn up. it was surprising to know the leading life scientists readily conceded they do not have -- all the answers or evenhe key answers to the central question. all these theories about the origin of life, the origin of information. i was off to cambridge, england, and i began a ph.d. program after a number of long convsations with dr. saxton and his colleagues about the problem of the origin of life and wted to investigate this mystery. in my graduate studies, i did
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two things. i studied the manyompeting eories of the orin of life that were out there. one the reasons this was such a profound mtery is the problem of the origin of information is a problem of apparent design. we talked about how the appearance of design, when we talk about digital code, machine code inside the cell, w are talking about something that is computerlike. bill gates, our local hero in seattle said dna is like a computer program but far more advanced than any we have created. thquestion arises, is this appearance of design, the code thad looks for all the world, that functions for all the world like computer program or a section of code in a
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manufacturing plant, is this the product of intelgence? looks aif it were designed by intelligence at the very foundation of life, that sees me and i began to investigate it. i came across a bk from a colleague of crees who wrote a treatise on how scientists should solve problems and on the cover of the book called chance and necessity, he said you should approach all problems with the same basic strategy, try to explain all phenomenay reference to chance processes, reference to natural laws or necessity, princips of nature that force the same thing to happen all the time for by the combination of thewo. as i began to investigate the different theories of the origin of life i found that sura enough
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the various theories exemplified one of these basic approaches, reliancepon chance for a reliance on necessity or natural laws, self organizational scenarios where e laws of physics and chemistry were invoked t try to explain the essential ingredients of life or some models attempted to explain the combination of the two. one such model called pre biotic natural selection invoked natural selection before life began. in my book, i looked at a whole series of proposals that have been made to solve the dna and a mat and account for the origin of information. each of these proposals analyze those approachs that he laid
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out. it is not my job to critique them, repoing the critiques made of these models by other origin of life theorist who are convinced the field is that a state of impasse. i like to -- these key models and of the ps 5 what is wrong with these approaches, said people at c-span -- we are going to -- this exempfies why the problem of t origin of information, i will let this as a popular approach to try to solve the problem of the origin
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of life. forces of c@emical necessity -- his colleague, gary, their idea that you could expla the specific arrangement of the amino acids you find in proteins, and they hope you can explain the basis of e dna molecule. forces of necessity, eost are familiar with crystals and the chemical formula for the crystal ofalt. if there's a plus charge, there is a force in the chemical attraction. it repeats over and over. chemical forces of attraio the arrangement of the keep.
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also a product of forces of attraction. he happened to be at the same conference. that conference, publicly repudiating his own theory which he called bio predestined 0 -- for presbyteans he is not a calvinist. these forces of attractio between constituents of the molecules, he ended u-- repudiated his theory which was shock, sent a ripple through, even more intrigued. i want to illustrae why this
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idea obiochemical predestination doesn't work. he realed, forces of attraction could help explain why the amino acids lineup the way they do in pteins, a fundamental issue, you had to explain the origin of the and a. the sequential arrangement of proteins, as he examined the chemical structure, his proposal was never going to work. if you look at the chemical structure, you see on the outside parts of the molecule, that is a representation of the backbone part of the molecule.
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it is a mediu upon whicthe genetic text is inscribed, not the information. in the vertical acce, the chemical bases, that is the story. his ide was you have forces of attraction that are responsible. the key method of information. the little stks in chemistry represent bonds. there are bonds with a backbe. attach to the backbone, chemistry, i will break down
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with another visual aid. i got a little message here. the mariners rock. this is a magnetic chalkboard. i haveagnetic platters tha sick to the chalkboard. there is a traction at work, self organizational forces. accept the information in this message the magnetic foes of attraction thacaused the letters to sti to the backboard. you can see that because the magnetic forces, thiis a nice analogy to what was goi on, the backbone of the molecule
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corresponds to the backbmard. may explain why the basss stick to the background but those forces of attraction did not explain the sequential arrangement of the characters. there is a chemical bond responsible for each site where the characters that this dictates the sequential arrangement of the characters that constitute theinformation. cab -- physical chemist said it is something extraneous to the physics and chemistry of the system. the information in this morning at seattle times headline, the result of the chemistry in the paper, we know carly something
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else ist work. what els is at work? tuitively we recognize my message on the chalkboard, the idea that ther is intelligence -- discussimns with charles saxton, he had this intuitions trolley. in an epilogue to hi book, he and his co-authors developed this idea or sketch it out. wh look for graduate school and began my work in cambridge i was seized by the question, could this intuitive connection between information and intelligence be developed into a scientificrgument? i went back and studied the scientific method reasoning that are used by scientists who are trying to reconstruct the
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distant past and developed theories of origins and that led me to charles darwin. it turns out darwin's method of scientific reasoning goes by a couple different names, sometimes called the method of multiple comting hotheses, sometimes called theethod of in deferring to the best explanation. he is defending his scientific method, he says it seems to me that supposinghat such a hypothesis were to explain such general propositions, we of in accordance with t common way of falling all sciences, to tell some better hypothesis be find out. trying to determine the cause of the agency event, they ha a limitation, historical scientists are not able to see the event.
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they prose different hypotheses that use the event. it is adequate to explain the effects in question. that leads to a question of scientific method. how we determine which explanation provides the best explanation for the event w are trying to explain? it turned out that darn and his key scientific mentor had a very practical, common-sense principle of reasoning they used to guide their scientific method of reasoning about the distant past and one day, glancing at the front piece of the book, i had an eat if any. the subtitle of his boat, crystalized this method in a single phre, he ss the title of theook is principles of geology being an attempt to explain the former anges of the earth's surface by reference
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to causes now in operation. the princip was very simple. if you are going to try to explain an event in the remote past you want to invoke a cause which is known to produce the effect in question. if you want to expla the layer of volcanic ash that existsn eastern washington you are going to prefer the volcanic eruption hypophysis over the earthquake hypophysis because we know that volcanoes produce such phenena and earthquakes do not. so i asked myself a question. what is the cause now in operation that produces digital code? what is the cause that we know of from n uniform and repeated experience, another part of the methodological victim -- looking for causes in operation tha we know from uniform experience. what is the cause in operatiof for production of information
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generally. thank you. th is what i thought. i came across an information scntist, a pioneer in the plication of information who happened to make theame observation, the creation of new information is habitually associated with conscious tivity. is that true? remember our quote from bill gates, dna is like a computer program but far more advanced, we know that proams come from programmers, information generally, whether talking about hieroglyphic inscription, a section of text in a newspaper headline or book or a section of dagital code always comes from an intelligence source, we know at from uniform and repeated experience of cau andffect. we know that cause is in operation. as i examine the competing
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approaches, therigin of information necessary to produce the first life i conscusly develop the case for intelligent design using the method of multiple comting hypotheses. i go through this in a systematic way, based on chance, necessity and the combination of the two. show from the literature in the area of origin of life biology that each of these approaches have failed, there's only one known, the of the orin of information and that caused, is intelligent design, conscious activity. if there's only one no cause, the presence of the effect points strongly back to the action of the cause. that is the argument i have developed in "signature in the cell: dna and the evidence for intelligent design," the argument based on ology, and what i address in the book which i will touch on in closing is
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there are other signatures or fingerprintsf intelligence in the iormational properties of closing systems. my colleagues that the biological institute, a lab we started here in seattle, have been working on a computational simulation of the animation you saw called the gene expression and one of my colleagues is computer programmer, architect level programmer at microft working closely with our molecular biologis. he dropped the book on the des in front of me cal design patterns, a standard manual for softwa ngineers. my colleague said to me how i am getting an ey feeling that someone figured all this out befores. i said what do you mean? he explained to me the concept
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of a design pattern, a term of art in computer science, a design strategy or design logic. he saithere are allinds of different design strategies, design pattern that we used to process information. i am finding all of them inside the cell or many of them, the interesting thing is they are -- started talng microsoft talk. versions of the same strategy we use. same design logic bud executed with much more engineering elegance. some of the things i discuss, in the last part of my book, the fact that we have a messages within messages in the genome called nested coatingf inrmation, files within folders way of storing and
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organizing information. there is a distributed storage and retrieval system for genetic modules for informational dules, informational datasets and the operating system in the genome which is not junk dna causes of those modules to be accessed and decaffeinated. that is will we understand it seemed to be. every level we're seeing a hierarchy of information, a fascinating system being revealed by the most current discoveries in modern bioogy. it is of very exciting time to be interested in lela biology, but all of the new study, new discoveries are showing that the case is stronger, each of these patterns is a feature for which there is one known cause in the universe, and tt causes is intligent design. i want to make -- a common
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objection to intelligent design iss an argument for ignorance, we are arguing from what we don't know rather an what we do know. by debating partner, michael share has made thisrepeatedly, intelligence side argues that life is too specifically complex to have elved by natural rcesthere for life must have been created by an intelligent designer. he is accusing us of arguing in a fallacious manner like this, the argunt for design is basically simply ignorance of what natur processes can do, we are arguing, natural processes cannot produce the effect in question, therefore since we can't think of anything else we invoke the mysterious notion o intelligent design. e notion is not mysterious, it is sething we know about from our repeated experience and the argument is not a argument from ignorance, it is an argument from what we know about the
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features o the cell ajd the genome and the cause/affect structure of the world. it goes like this, none of the natural procs we have examined have demonstrate the power to produce the effect in question. the specified information the run the show in biology but we know of a type of cause which is known to produce that affect, intelligence, it constitutes an explanation based on what we know from biology, from our knowledge of the cause/effect structure othe world. this is an unscientific or fallacious argument, i have turned the tables and showed b usg darwin's method and applying it to information to evidence he did not knowout, we can show the central legacy of darwin is not that there is no evidence of design but we can use his method to reaffirm the
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case for a design based on excitingiscoveries of modern biology. thank you. [applause] now you have to read the book and there will be books and a library and steve will signing them. we will ask some questions, we established question time if you'd like to come to the microphone and make a short question he will answer them. we have one. m@ybe we could line up along here. i have a feeling there will be more. >> one of the most impressive
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argume in your book you ven't ntioned here is that the very end, the suggestion that it is necessy to pset a multiuniverse process to avoid the improbability of this kind of code development occurring within the time at that our universe has existed. i would like to know what is happening with that argument right now. >> you know folks are in trouble when they start invoking multiple, infinite numbers of other universes to render an otherwise extremely improbable events probable. its a rather technical discussion when you get into ese hypotheses, we have a first-class philosopher of phics doing cutting edge work on that. he has an article coming out
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later in the yea cle the nature of nature and i refer you to his work on that. the send appendix in the book has the ten page discussion which i take on that attempt to solve the problem byunting mlti verses, it is technical and i refer people to it. i would say there is one biologist who has proposed this, and i think he may be serious but there's a sense of tongue-in-cheek in the proposal that was received in the same spirit among most scientists working on the origin of life. imaginhow unsisfying that is to figure out how t chemistry produce the code and somebody said we have these billionsnd billions of other universes at it happened someway, somehow there and whappened to be in the lucky one. at essentially is a confession of ignorance. there areechnical problems
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with that proposal even on its own terms which fill out in the book. >> this is monumental acevemt. i understand th you were seeking endorsements including francis collins. i was wondering if there is any -- do you see any overlap between when you are doi in thsignature in the cell and what collins has argued it in the language of god and are you looking forward to debating him at some point? >> very timely question. i found it unlikely he would provide it. there is the kind of riosity, holland has been critical of intelligent design, most of his criticisms have been directed and michael b. b.'s argument of irreducible complexity. collinss famous foris work
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on the human genom project and when the completion of that was announced onhe white house lawn he overtly said we are not the result of purely uirected evolutionary process and instead referred to the hum genome aq the book of life by which god ote the plan for building life. i actually quote collins the first chapter of my book in a critical manner. i am curious how he would respond to this argument of information. the human genome guyall about the book of life. yond that, although he said he is againstntelligent design, argues fine-tuning of the laws of physics that were put in place in the beginng of the universe speak powerfully to intelligence behind the uterus. that is a design argument, he makes a similar argument about the origin of the human moral
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sense. i am curious and i think this is something that i think would ify conversation would be in order to get to the btom of this, exactly where does he agree and disagree and if so, given that he do make design arguments and if anything, the complexi of the genome exceeds even the complexity of the fine-tuning laws of physics and chemistry. thanks for that question. >> i i quote him right, dkins says any idiot can qee that random changes are not going to gerate protein, but he makes the claim that ranm mutations plus natural selection is not random, and i can't put that together. i don't think in your book that you answer that explicitly
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platte, but to me is nonsense to say the result of that is not random. >> i have a fairly extensive ction of the book on this approach which combines natural selectioand random variations or random mutations. the context is different, trying to explain the origin of life, you have a problem if you're going to invoke natural selection in a pre bioti context, this is where the problem has been. for natural selection to work you have to have organisms that are capable of differential reproduction. natural selection actuall presupposes self replicating organisms but self replication in turn presupposes the existence of information rich dna and protns, the information in dna in the process of self replicion. ere is a problem for scientists to say we want to rescue the origin of life,
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chemical evolution from the improbability by bringing in natural selection because natural selection is relevant once y have selfeplicating organisms which in turn implies that you already have dna and protein, we are trying to explain the origin of the informatn of the and a protein so illustrating this with my students, like the guy who is walking home from work, hmust be a philosopher of science or something, he fal in a big hole and can't get out but he says no problem, all i need is a ladder, he walks home and gets the ladder, walks back, jumps in and climbs out. . begginthe question of ere you get the ladder, where you get the information rich dna protein th makes of replication and natural selection possible. one of the leading origin of life biologist's says series of pre biotic natural selection
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have a problem, they need information which implies the presupposed in the first place, a big argument. anttpt to bring that in doesn't solve the problem and you are essentially left with thrown backn pure chance or else this attempt to use self organizational forces of necessity. very good question. >> i am wondering where you got the intelligence for the title of your book "signature if the cell: dna and the evidence for intelligent design". i heard richard dawkins use that phrase that yodon't acknowledge that in the book. >> i didn't want to get caught plagrizi or accusing me of intelligent design sometng. the phrase dawkins used was signature of intelligence, the context you arreferring to is that the end of the movie expelled where dawkins is probed about the origin of life, he acknowledgeds no one knows how
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life first began, he i talking within theramework of a standa evolutionary approach which is to the only materialistic explanations. then he goes on to say i suppose he said there cld be a signature of intelligence inside life and if so, tt would point to the need of an intelligent cause, but he says them have to be an intelligence someplace out in space that had itself evolve. that is thebt hypophysis, anythingut god, i raise that not just because -- not becse intelligent design through the existence of god but dawkins program of the new atheist program presupposes that god can't be part of the answer, proposing th space alien
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hypophysis, shows that he has a distaste for considering anything beyond that. its very curious that he acknowledgeds an explanatis an the origin life hamas since there's no evidenc of intellent design, believe in god is tantamount to a dilution but he argues there's not a tter explanation than design, which he does so in effect since no one knows within materialistic perspective. in a sense you can see the foundational premise of his new atheist argument is falsely predicate. ere's compelling evidence of sign and dawkins in the origin of first life, dawkins is not in a position to answer that argument. >> you seem to start to answer
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this with your last slide, as you e getting toward, it seems it was almost sounding like got the gaps argument and your last line saying we do see intelligent design at work today so we can invoke that. i know a lot of people who would see that argumentnd say we haven't seen something like an intelligent designer like god in operation. could you comment on that? >> it is not an argument for god's existing, it is an argument for the signing intelligence because the principle of reaning involved scientifically as they set uniform and repeated experience. we know by introspectio by no other way the powers of our own conscience limited minds, tt they can produce information among other effects. we have a rich wealth of experien from which to draw and in furing the mind of similar intelligence and capacity. once you havenferd that it raises the secon question about
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the identity of the designing telligence. i'm a trational feast myself, not all advocates of theheory are, the design hashen you might call friendly implications -- steve stricker the implications pointing in the presence of the stick believe so it doesn't prove it, whether there's a god of the gas argument, the point of thinking of the concluding slides, the point was this, the god of the gas argumenmas the same thing as the claimant becaus cause a is not sufficient to produce the effect there for some other cause be did it even though we don't have any positive evidee that the other cause could have done so. that is not the case with intelligent design, we are saying the chance, necessity, combination, not demonstted the power toroduce the effect in question namely information t there is another cause that is known to have the power is to
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produce the effe in question, it is not the fallacy of arguing from ignorance, it is an infence to the explanation -- a standard form of scientific reasoning. >> i was amazed that you would actually answer my e-mails and i sent y one -- >> and nasty objection? >> that was a one. i askedhe one that i wish you would me a comment here i said that even if all the pieces and parts and elements to a sell ritter, it was still not alive, life uses the information and i made the parallel over to@ the fact that the mind uses the brain, the brain is not the mind. i wish you would say something about that ..
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but there may be much more that we need to investigate and i would mention particular the richard stearn burr who are looking at what is called on to
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the genetic information the blueprint information responble for organizing the proteins a cell types in this cell types into tissues, the tissues and organs into body plans. there is a rh hrarchy of information involved in every living system and it is one of the thingshat makes the subject so says the-- fascinating. >> i think we are at the d but i want to ask you a question about this very exciting period that w are in and that your book as kind of flagship for. can you mentioned some of the other things that support at discovery institute particularly at the center for science and culture enterpri that you thinpeople should know about, works in progress that a coming along that shore up and hel defend this exemplary argument? >> we had-- helping us with their summer mentoring program for young scientists last weekend we had a nice photo op in which we put his book in my
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book togetr. his epilogue was in a sense the inspiration for my book. my book has a book that i coming in cereal or what they call in the movies, the sequel. that is the work that region sturenburg is doing on the myth of junk dna and the immaterial genome. keon jonatn wells, paul nelson are involved in a very interesting research. something by the way that is not easily are readily explained by neodarwini because darwinism once to explain biologil form in the reference to mutations of the lowest level of information in the hierrchy, e mutatigns in the genome but to build a whole organism you need hhgher levels of organizatio you can you tate the na indefinitely without respect to time in trials and never build the new organism because you are notroviding that higher level information, the blueprint information that is required some of those gentlemen have exciting projects.
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also contested work experimentally on proteins, and, occasionally on modeling what mutations can and can't do and 4 billin years of history so this whole program of research is not jt an argument for telligent degn. it is a whole research program that leads and we think fraudful directions for science. >> thank you di. ladies and gentleman, think about what you would like to be a part of this program by joining the discovery society , and our discovery institute. we would welcome you and please thank you steve and all of you for coming tonight. [applause]@ [applause]
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>> steven meyer is director of the center for science and culture at the discovery institute. his books incde darwinism, design and public edution. for more information visit discovery.org. >> michael jason overstreet, is there a medi@ bias against barack obama? >> guest: i would say that it doesn't, it is not borne cessarilfrom the media but i think that there is a perception out there that the iormation start somewhere and we are led to believe it is the mia that is generating it so i don't know if it is the media per se but i think my book says that because,
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that is the only place where we can get our information fm, there must ba so i think the answer, very long answer is yes i believe that theris a media assault on obama. i would say thi for the 71 days my book covers from the democratic convention to election day i felt there was an disinformation out there that was completely unacceptable. from him being possibly a domestic terrorist to, i don't wa to get into quoting individual people from various networks but there was information allowed to flow out there and i absolutely thk you did som damage. i thinke won despite that but had he not maybe the book would even be bigger but i think there is still historyill show that there were a lot of things said during the 71 days tt barack obama had to overcome. >> host: what is an example of those things? >>ue: i think one of the
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examples is, i am a big fan of chris matthews. i like chris matthews. one particular day i was watching ande mentioned the word emigrant and obama in the same sentence, a story about an immigrant. i think the person on the panel said no obama was born in hawaii. he sai no this is a story about an immigrant. he is not an immigrant. the casual viewer may take that information and say, i am not going to vote for obama, he is an immigrant. i was a brocast maj journalism. think the idea of the, the concept of emigrant floated out there is not responsible. granted most of us knew he sn't but i just don't think it was a story about an immigrant. why is this day. where did the word emigrant come from? if i'm correct his father was an exchange stude. he was not an immigrant. so it is the words thatre used that conform to be the assault. does not in your face like fox news.
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obviously that is an assault. that is an in-your-face barack obama is this, this and this. it is the subtle stuff like may be showing aepublican ad that shows obama with a photo of children behind him about a sex ed, some concept of sex said that lebanon during the election and then cnn ran that actual ad but the republican party had the right to put it up. i don't believe cnn or any of the networks have a right. it is not responsible journalism. that add to me showed oma a lookg like pedophile. he is stanng there le this. their children behind him and it is barack obama wants to ach children about sex education. fine, showed that. you are the republican party but cnn, msnbc and fox, no, don't show that and ink that was very bad. >> mr. overstreet use self published this book.
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what with that process like? the idea came to me from watching gore debate to george bush, and i watch the debates and iou always think george bush really did not do well, core really one that did they producvery professorial and very iortive so at the end of the debate that would wait for the post debate coverage and sure enough they would say things like boy george bush was really funny, he did a good jo in tha debate. i am looking going, the media is telling people, so i wouldet calls from people saying jason i don't know it looks like george bush won that debate and they are tting the information from th media so i got the idea but once i saw obama that th convention give his speech back in l4 i just thought wow if e got a chance to run the i would be interested to see how the media tries to parsley says in the book just road itself. from the first day of the democrat convention, the first chapter is called these people
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because every network would check i just kept hearing that the income of who were these people? so i said to myself it woulde interesting to see if at the republican convention they say that where these people, john and cindy mccain, but iever heard that. i heard it from judy woodruff say that and i loved judy woodruff by herter use the wd these people and for african-americans i myself am biracial, my fatheis black and my mother is white. i consider myself a black man but to hear, to hear that word just, theseeople, don't want to hear that. it definitely was a passion a project of mine so when i woke up the morning of the democratic convention i said this is the fit day i will write in the road for 71 straight days and i held myself hostage. each chapter in the book is a day and they have a different theme and a lot of people remember the lipstick on a pig
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as the theme for the day. south it is a very fascinating an interesting project. if i hn't self published it i dot think i could've gotten it out in time. >> host: at explain itself publishing processor us. >> guest: for me, i would say it is an easy pcess at first because i went through book search, which they were very good. they allowed me to really kind of the creativand then i would send off to them than e-mail, villa mailed etc. and then they wou get back to me with information in the process went back and forth for a month after i finished the book on election day andhen after that i was able to go through and edit, a process with my editor. we went through an editing process for another month and so all in all i was able to give the book out by late january, early february on line and amazon.com hansley there has been this growing moentum for the book and people are very
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interested in the book. it is in some local bookstores and l a but the more of your people at the festival, the more i realize it is a hot-button issue. people remember the specific days. i remember that, i remember that, so it is a history book. years from now people are going to look back and go you know what, maybe i shouldn't have said tt. maybe tom brokaw should not have said that. i am not a member of the media and if i work for cnn i doubt whatever about cnn but i d't work for anybody cyberabout eryone from the "l.a. times" writing an article that the headlineaid stars flocked to see sarah palin. of course i opened up thel.a. times," what stars went to see sarah palin? there was john foyt into others i didn't know, three people in an "l.a. times" article and e headline is stars flock to see sarah palin? when his three people a fck? that is misleading. that is the kind of stuff i write about.
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i don't write about the stuff that fox news says that much because it is kind of easy to do. sean hanty inot a hard target, let's be honest. i would love to go on his show and talk to him. that was myself publishing process. if there's anyone out there who nts to self published be eady to do a lot of work because i gained a lot of respect for publishers. if you can find any mistakes in my book, who please let me know but it was probably six or seven editing processes. i would encourage anyone who has an idea that they are passionate about to go forward futzed a.u. of go to boots that the "l.a. times" festival. you had to put this together. , to be put into it? >> guest: call on knoll at it has probably been a couple, two 3,000 to get to this point. i would say that it is, if i had to do over again i wouldo exactly the same way i think i would prefer to self published this book.
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in the book i refer to myself as a political activist, lf-publishing is part of the political activist process so i would encourage those out there ifoureassionate about it, you have to go for it yourself. >> host: what is a political activist in your view? >> guest: it is someone who stays o top of daily events and is boisterous abo it. i have 20 people coming to my booth and i talked ld enough for people around me to hear come to bring them in and they can disagree. there is a book out called the slobbering love affair. i read the book, it a good book. bernard goldberg. we this directoryhapters of my book. it is the bug in my book is that they woytek about how the media loved obama o day but then next they know so you have to tell both sides. two bernard goldbert i would say you did a great job on your book but there is much more to tell them apart were the media loved him. the american people loved him. i don't know so mucof the
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media loved him. i think barack obama would argue that certain members of the media that loved him. i don't agree wit that. >> host: would youo when you are t publishing books? >> guest: i write screelays. i live in los angeles. my girlfriend is someone who is very supportive of evething i want to do when she has been someone who does push me for it. she was a big part, part of the self-publishing process is having someone to support you in terms of pushi you andping it going. that is an important thing so between my writing screenplays and not doing a book and hofully doing a lot ofalking on talk shows about my book. i am very passionate about this book. that is my life and iove it. >> host: if someone is interested in purchasing their book, where can get it? >> guest: wechner leaking hitted at amazon.com. the local bookstore in l.a. that i love, diesel, the bookstore is a great sre.
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is probably going to be in books of and those are local bookstes. in ashley i haven't been ableo get into any. >> host: michael jason overstreet"71 days" the media assat on obama is self published book. >> in more than a dozen works national book award-winning jonathan kozol has analyzed and critiqued the american public educatio system. a former vice esident of lehman brothers is t inside story in the collapse of one of the oldest investment uses in america.
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tippens book shop this event. it is jt over an hour. >> good afternoon. i am patrick robinson analyte actual did the writing of the book. i am a ghostwriter sometimes. i ually write novs, but i have ghosted about four books and they have all been pretty successful in this is the fifth. and it happened in a way that was really extraordinary. larry lived in new york an i was in england and my son and larry were friends, t james was back in our house and there it was far away across the ocn. and james said one day, would you write larrycdonald's book? i said i don't know at it was to write a book about. he said you know he worked for lehman. i actually didn't. i knew very worked for wall street but dn't know where
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he worked. i said that the want, he wants a book about lehman brothers? james sd yeah, he wants to blow the lid off of lehman brothers and larry head written lone survivor, which is another thriller. i said that he really wants to blow the lid off lehman broths and, no punches pulled. i don't to deal with someone pussyfooting around making excuses for people. i said that he really wants to let it rip, i am probably his man so tell him i would if that is what it wants to do. larry sd he did indeed want to tell me the whole unvarnished tale of how lehman brothers collapse, the biggest bankruptcy in the history of the universe. i said well then i would like that but you had betteret over here. he said when, and i said now. we left the following morning and was in england for dinner, which is a pretty good fate of
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activity. and we srted there. it was difficult, because what they don't know about finance and wall street would probably fill fenwayark. i just had no ia about the subject. i have never done a book about finance,ut the one thing i have discovered is that ghostwriters need to know as little as possible. experts write for other experts. the story is ripe for other historians and the first time this happened to me was a few years back, when john bertram had asked me to write his book about winnin the america's cup in 1983 for australia. and i remember i said to him, john-malkiad reddick couple of books and i said to him john, i don't know enough about raising a big boats to be able to do a story like that. and he is a big kind of iconic
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aussie and he said come on me, you have got the wrong idea. i don't need an expert. i am an expert. i needy blunt with a pen. an that was actually, i had never heard anyone say athing like that and i thought that was pretty cool. anyway, we waed our way through that and did the book and it was the biggest selling book in the history of australia. when i came to do myext book, that i was going to goes for admiral woodward who ran the battle of the falkland islands in 1982, i told them that exact story in the set of well i can actually understand that. and he said it is better that you don't know. he said i don't want a historian. first of all he igoing to argue with me and tell me what i did wrong. [laughter] he said i lost 159 people and i
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have some own telling me how i should have done it. [laughter] and he said, so any way we did th but actuallhad to ask him everything beuse i just don't know that much about firing guided missiles and knocking planes out of this guy. woodward destroyed the argentinian aiforce, sht down 79 british bombers. woodward and i managed to do this and whehe rode his little author's note in the fro, in the foreword he said i have tried to tell my story as if i was rounting it to an old friend and for this task, i chose patrick robinson, gho was obliged to sit very quietly, very patntly into a greateal of listening, none of which are his long suit. [laughter] it is the first sentence in the book. any way we did this and i really
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didn't know about, who does in saving a warship. you don't really know anything about it and it was t first work crfa on computers, firing missiles and all that. it is very high tech stuff. since then really he has been my adviser, writing. >> needy thrillers and submarine book and finally when i got to talking to larry about doing this and realizing i knew even less about finance, i didn't know what a bond was. i thought it had something to do with roger moore. [laughter] and i calledhe admiral and i said, sandy, i am about to embark on a book on the subject about which i know absolutely nothing. he said so far as i could tell it is never stop you before. [laughter] si larry and i set sl on
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this adventure and he came over and t was very, it was the hardest project i have ever done because not only did i not know anything about it, i didn't know what his story was and i didn't kn how we would get from ao z. i didn't ow the story. i knew this bank gone bust but i didn't really know anything else about it. it was very dficult. he had to come over, came over to england for for about nine days each tim and left me when you w back to new york, left me to write four chapters. and that was really ver difficult. he had-- my son stepped in as a researcher and they had a computer line to each other almost all day. he sent over masses of
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gazines, journals, books. th office looked like a mine field. and i was constantly left with 45,000 words to write and him in new york. i have a question on every line. [laughter] and most people would hav questionvery five pages but i didn't know anything about it, and he w amazingly patient and he knew what he wanted to do. and he did have the story that took incredible courage to write because obviously line by line he was making monstrous enemies and not the people who just worked their but people who ran the place for commend you have got 100 million in t bank and were out there justakingoney from the organizion allhe time, making sts desions that was bringing the country, the company's very slowly to its knees. and of course, larry knew about as much about writing a bk of
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this kind as i knew abou submarine warfare. and we had to kinof thettack it from-- i was always trying to write it for him, but it was difficult. fornstance, he quickly-- it quickly becamepparent that we had three major themes and they were that lehman brothers weren't all stupid. the two men that ran the place were spectacularly stupid. that comes out is the book goes along. but three times the cleverist people inhe company, all of them really worked wh larry. he was one of them. there were about ten. were actually in the boardroom saying, the executive committee saying you have to stop this. this cannot be allowed to gon. his close friend was thumping the table saying, out there is an iceberg and w are going straig at it.
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believe in the titanic swerved. agn and again they were borrowing moley, losing money and they knethey had these three meetings. lay had the documents. we are going to go bust and we e going to down with $600 billion in debts. you canuy scandavia with that. they couldn't possibly have paid it bac there were these three warnings in front of me and when i came to write it, ts was my part. itma gid jump. i remember saying three things. three times they were ignored. it was probably the worst triple sinc st. peter denied christ's but that is what a ghostwriter is supposed to do. he is supposed to gather these things together and make them kind of come alive. now, the book made the "nework times" list after fiveays.
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and i he it will continue. it is a good book. larry was unbelievably brave. i mean, he really spilled the beans. i was always saying are you sure you want to say that? he said that is what happened and that is what we are going to say. at the end of it i suppose it is a testimony to the book. in a sense it is a testimony to the book. heap picked five of the most important people in lehman brothers, the biggest brains in the corporation who had helped him and you he had verified things with, and each one gf them read t book from cover to cover and not one of them made e serious change, not one. and head told a story that was not only spectacularly truthful, but it was, took a lot of courage to do it and he did it,
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and god knows i was rlly proud of him. he never once flinched. i said, this guy could have as both put in a cement jacket. he said the hell with them, we will put him in one because he is talking about people who ruined thousands of people. they all had to leave their bonuses behind. which was terrible. people who had worked a lifetime at lehman's walked out in their million shares or half a million shares at 75 bucks or suddenly worth nun, nothing. and i mean it was the iost terrible thing you can imagine. now that really is about as much as i can tell you because all i did was sit and read the story but i will read you a couple of bits that he would like. which will showou what it was like to write this stuff for larry. not knowing that much about it in trying to make it all spring to life.
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it was still very difficult. let me have a go at this, hang on. this is a bit about wendell subwent bust because they had an analyst in that firm called jane castle, who led b saying that delta could noturve. that is a pretty big thing to say about an airline that has got 145 bolinger tang in and around the parking lot. she said it could happen. i will tell you ait about this. jane had been telling us for several months that delta was a candidate for bankruptcy and 11 minutes after 5:00 on the afternoon of september 1come 2005 she was proved right preclude flies on to my screen, delta airlines files for bankruptcy protection and i swear to god the collective heart of lehman brothers skits about 6 feet. larry mccarthy was not in and is
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e principal delta conible bnd trader i had markets to make. i was on my feet in an instance. big joe beckons was right there xt may armed and ready to trade. delta's straights nonconvertible bonds. alex was walking directly towards us. i opened up the line to larr and i could see jane making a beeline for my desk just when i needed her. that is what i loved about her. during a time of crisis she was always there because for the next hour there was going to be pandemonium as millions of delta bonds crashing through the floor or going to be launched on to th market by peopltrying to get the hell out ofhem. many of those bondholders gribetz clients. we were duty bound to purchase them and the hits would be flying like cannonballs, of millions and millions of dollars worth f delta airlines bonds that no one wanted any longer. my blood was pumping. just for a few moments the floor was very quiet and alex ki
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standing right at mshoulders said quietly, steady larry, we are ready for this. iooked at jane, stay focus she reminded me. there were 52 cents each the matter how my come up for sale. wet larry h once said about her, flashed throughy mind, ja can tell you what delta airlines is serving for lunch in first class on the morning flight from jfk to berlin and what it costs them. there's nhing she doesn'tnow about the company. i inducive the position of most of the bond partners. they would do darned near anything to get out but i had to make will be an avalanche of sellilg. millions of dollars depended on my decision which i guess could weigh every eye andhe entire oor was trained on us. everyone waiting for my first call on the price i would buy at in the price i would sell. devitt lehr remember the firms around the beginning and then in
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the middle of the northwest rlines also declared bankruptcy. there was one of those audible gasps around the floobthe kind of noise you hear in a big ballpark when a fastball writs fast the bter in a full count in the night. i thought the roof woing to falenecause we could all by northwest bondholders bailing out t it was too late. the sales might but only will this right arm into the air and-- i have aig on the wire and they are a seller. where are you one delton? give me a bit on 5 million. for a split-second i hesitated and mike yelled, they have got 5 miion to go. where are you? that is when i called it, 16, 18 and the moment the words came out of my mouth lehman brothers was committed to an 800,00dollar purchase, 5 million bonds at 16 cents on
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the dollar. you are done i said snapping up the traders, no goingack phrased and confirming their rst trade in delv it was costing marble. i heard mike fire out his own confirtion to t customer, okay you are done. 20 seconds later we got hit again. terrce tucker on the line, where are you one delta, 5 million up. these people were desperate trying to get rid of their holdings in the bk. i called the same price, 16 but the words were hardlout of my mouth when he got hit for another 5 million then again instantly had dropped the price, 15, 17 and our client ticket. yowere de i yelled, maybe they would set letthough but they never did. our bester esteban sales diva call that, i've got silverpoint on the line, where are you on delta right now? five up. three marcelle orders me flashing joe was talking in all
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directions. hit, buy, 10 million up. he was a trading machine at its best. everyone was shouting outme of the salesman,he traders, millions of dollars changing hands near all of them in the same direction, our. i dropped to 13 and still the sell orders came in. i guess the ratio of sellers to buyers was ten to one. i got hit immediately for 7 million for thearry on the fund bought million worth then terrence the best salesman i had bell debt mecom i've t it fired 15, million up. it was the only buy so far. sitting next to me jane sat quietly, we are stealing them larry, we are stealing them. stay focus, they are still worth 52 cents, trust me. any way that is the kind of thing this book is full of and that was being run really by larry's boss and i was going to
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read you a bit about him but i think he is a-- fellow and i think i've probably talked for long enough. but that is what it was like trying to creat that from someone who wasn't really in the room, who was across the atlantic ocean, and i'm going to turn it over to him now and he can tell youll about his book. [applause] > he is a tough act to follow. let me get this up a little bit. i just wanted thank everybody for coming in spending a betiful sunda with us. when i saw the weather fecast i was littl nervous, thinking nobody wouldhow but it is nice to have everybody here. annabel and i came up onriday evening, made t trip up from manhattan but it is always worth the trip. we love coming back for the cape and love of being with their
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family. i corrupt here, and the story o lehman brothers around that weekend in september, really was the day that capitalism changed forever. our world really changed fever adt was a tou weekend not only for the lehman employees but for so many people around the country that didn't really rdalize th their lives would change, businesses, credit nes had been cut on credit cards, of 401(k)'s had become 201(k)'s and mt of t problems emanate from one of the st mysterioes places on wall street, the 31st floor of lehman brothers and it was a tragedy that never ever should have happened. i was sitting there on that weekend, september 15th,nd i wasn't reay sitting there. i was down onhe map. fl like mohammed ali was standing up on top of me and the referee is giving me the counts, and there were so man of us that were dow but i was really
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dowl. i wanted to dig deep down inside into their preserve that we all have plans to try to make lemode out of lemons so to speak, and i reaed out to james n. patrick and they were nice enough to hear me out, give me the time and insure nuremburg was also extremely helpful in articulating the project in helping me understand what we were about to endeavor upon. i will never forget as i am tting there, the next day on the tarmac at jfk d ihink it was a delta flight actually, and you know when you were sitting there among the tarmac an you hear the throttle up coming here the engines and we are racing downhill, racing down the way, and i just realized that that
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plan is ting off that my life is going to change forever. i really wanted to do this, like we said earlier, to expose the few that heard so many. there were so many wonderful people at lehman brothers, so many people in the mide of the ship that not only were calling out, not everybody that works on wall street is an investment banker that is pulling in five, ten, $20illion a year. it is true if he made it to the ecutive committee alehman brothers it was the equivalent of hitting theew york state lottery. those guys pull down 20 to 25 a year. there was a group of yes men and yes women that were extremely loyal po richard fuld and extremely silence to richard fuld. but the beginning of this story is reay what i'm mostroud about. if you work into-- walk into any bookstore in our country today
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you see piles and piles of financial books, a lot of them fromrnalistq and academics and patrick and i really want to make this a human story, to help people understand finnce, to bring main street deep inside of wall street and really help people to understand what actually happens in an invement bank and how it actually works. i mean if you remember, lehman brothers is 158-year-old investment dead. lehman broer survived the civil war, suive thereat depression, survived world war i, world war ii, the korean war, the nixon impeachment. lehman brothers survived co much and survived 9/11 but what she could not survive with the change, the very traumatic change in its business philosophy. an investment bank, the reason lehman brothers survived 158 years is that was in the moving
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business. let me explain with the moving business is. campbell sip corporation 80 years ago when it to build their fit planned, wanted to make that first investment and create some jobs. they came to lehman brothers and they needed $10 million lehman brothers did traditional investment banking. lehman broers was the black thai investment nk and they raise that $10 million, they paid to campbell soup and they sold bonds and stocks over here to do it and they maybe fee. that fee is the traditional investment banking fee, traditional business creates jobs. that i the moving businesses and what we started to see on the trading floor in 2004, 2005 and 2006, he could clearly see was bloodcurdling scare through the years that went forward, lehman was getting deeper and deeper and deeper into what is called the storage biness. they were taking bigr bet they were getting long assets,
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mmercial real estate that they could sell and they were trying to chase the big boys. they were trying to chase goldman sachs. they were trying to chase blacks don't. they went to roll the dice and get to be that top investment bank. we burrite in the middle of the pack. lehman brothers was the fourth largest investment bank so we had smaller investment banks the lowestut we had much bigger investment banks above us and after the glass-steagall act was taken apart in 2000 and we did a nice job, patrick did a wonderful job in the prologue explaining hat happened, that allowed the gramm-leach-bliley act that took apart the glass-steagall act, allow these big commercial banks to compete agait lehman suppa lehman brothers in a very dangerous position because now lehman brothers is a small to mid-sized investment bank and w we have, bank of america, all these large mass of the emits of commercial
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banks with massive deposit. you have remember an investment bank like lehman brothers did not taken deposits. it invest money around t world, it sells stocks and bonds but it doesn't have people's money in a bank the way does, the way bank america doe. and bankamerica have over a trillion dollars of realoney in those banks and those are checking accounts, thosere paychecks from hard-woing people and what we started to see in 2004, 2005, 2006 on the tring floor at lehman brothers was a very clear increase in leverage. lehman brothers was increasing that debt, increasing our debt to compete with theig boys and we get dper a deeper and deeper involved into businesses and into hnvestments that were very, very difficult to move as the years leamond and lehman got deeper and deeper and deeper into the storage business.
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in writing this book, "a colossal failure of common sense" are we stuck to 150 people up and down the firm and i will never forget inhose days in september, october and november, especially in december when people found out i was writing this book with the hall of fame goes to in patrick robinson, my phone rang off the hook. etinctive committee membe we calling me, people that i knew someone distantly that all of a sudde bame very good allies. people on the list committee reached ou to me. people were so upset that this wonderful, wonderful institution had been destroyed and as they peel back the onion, the one horrifying, just a horrifying thing that i learned was this man up on that 31st floor had a deep, dark secret. they didn't want to be exposed
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for all they didn't understand. the 21st century brought a lot of changes, but one of the most dangerous cnges that it brought us all is 21st century financial products, securitizations and the risks that were taking place in the marketplace were so, so much greater. the dmmino were getting bifger and bigger and closer and closer and closer together. lehman brothers in essence was one b domino and as i peeled back the onion and i spoke to many people throughout the firm i realized that it wasn't just me that never saw richard fuld. we articulated this very well in the book. we never saw the man on the tradin floor. we never saw any mbers of the board or the executive committee on the trading floor but it wasn't just u it was high level risktakers in the bank, people that knew,
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oroughly uerood the risks in the system, people that barely understood credit derivatives, peoplthat thoroughly understood what warren buffett calls financial weapons of mass destruction. we had experts i these areas and they were not being consulted. we have brilliant, brilliant financial talent that was not being consulted because this man upstairs, like i said, did not want to be exposed for all they didn't understand. then 30,006 throh 2007 we started to see people stand up. brave people, courageous pdople start to stand up. i will never forget june 6, 2005, michael gil band. we are in a meeting with l the traders and a lot of the risk-takers, a lot of the research analysts and michael gil band started to do something which is verynusual. most people on wall street in these big meetings are very politically correct but the are also very financially correct in
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terms of not wanting to upset the people up on the 31st floor and michael gil band along with others but i will never forget how we started to queion these ev financial products that were in the system, these evil mortgages, theseortgages that started off at 2% and then maybe a year-and-a-half later or two ars later were up to eight, nine or 10% resetting in the commissions that the mortgage people around our country, the incentives to sell the most evil products and michael gelband and others were concern that the gdp in the united states in 2007 and 2008 would be punched right in the gut as these mortgage resets, as these resets started to hurt families and really at some point you have to pay the piper. there were so many of these products that i will never forget that day the warning and
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a warningbo sub-prime, the warnings that i have never heard of really. didn't know much about sub-prime in 2005 and this is the first time i was exposed to these words, sub-prime. these mortgage resets, words that are all over the american vernacular today. i was one of the srting to call those warnings. theeal tragedy of hman brothers is one by one by one the warnings were ignored and these wonderful people really silence. lehman brothers, y kept your head down. you did your jobr you lost both i saw one a great person after another completely silence. harjiv risk officer, global risk mgr. of the year in 2005 in one meeting, one investment banking meeting where she was questioning whether not women should get into one of these big dealof the top of the market, richard fuld told her to shut
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up. this is the type of culrehat we have alehman brothers. a culture of fear. e tragedy was that we are going faster a faster and faer right toward that iceberg and one by one by one the great people that i really care a lot about were silenced. i think there's so many lessons here f us all. i think going forward we need boards of directors that are more accountable. if you think about it lehman brothers, at the top of the market was a 750 bilon-dollar investment bank, a $750 billion of risk and we only had 18 billion of tangible equity so we have $750 billion worth of stocks, worth of bonds, worth of commercial real este all over the world and we only had 18 billion in real money. that is 44 to one leverage in their board never once, our board of directors nev once complained or steady thing or
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question this type of dangerous lerage. harbord s filled with inexperienced people, silent people, not financial experts and i think going forward w have to ve boards of directors-- if you have a systemially risky bank that in essence is one giant domino you have t have financial experts on the board uft the people that understand credit derivates, underand securitization. another thini was very encouraged on friday, i niced that aig had made a move to permanently detaches their chairman and ceo rules. in other words on wall street in 2007 you had a proliferation of ceos that were also chairman of the board and patrick, as we were writing the book, like i said he didn't understand much about finance and he said to me larry, that is really the foxworth looking after the chicke coop, wouldn't you say?
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and i couldn't agree more. you were talking about a situation where lehman had actually become a monarchy. you had one man in the incredib position of power to the point where ty appointed a cfin 200 late 2007 that had no experience ever as the cfo on wall street and just because our president and our chief executive officer wanted this new cfo in tt role, they felt, they had the free rein to put lehman in a very dangerous position i think going forrd, the last thing i would say that we can do to hp this country and make it a better place is to-- the regulators that exists, that are supposed to be protecting us all, they are supposed to be protecting us all from some of the systemichanges inhe system. we had in 2007, we had dscc, we
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head the fdic, we h the office of thrift supersion, we have the fsa in europe, the cotroller of the currency, all of these are massive regulats with hundreds of thousands of people working but working in silos and not working as a coordited group and complete lack of coordination and that is the complete lack of risk-management, when you have all of these regulators that are supposed to berseeing these dangs, supposed to be overseeing these terrible, terrible global risks that were growing through 2007 and the reason-- this is not all richard fuld's probl. clausal so the problem of our regulators and the fact that they were s horribly, horribly and coordinated. going forward if we are going to have people in these roles, we should have people that have a global systemic riskanager, aba committee of people to look of the whole picture, look i
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the leverage all around wall street, l around the different banks that there be accountability because capilism cannot work without transparency and ve have to, we have to have, we have to have transparency o risk. we can't hav investment banks that are black boxes anymore. because you know, from the bottom of my heart, i wrote this book because we never ever want this to happen again, and still live, i still live six blocks from lehman brothers. casionally, once or twice a week i walk by and i promised myself, i promised myself that i'm not going to look up, i'm not going to look up and see where we had such a wonderful time ago we had such great people that were silence but we had such a great group the people that really worked so hard each and every day and i promised myself i will look up.
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but in the end i alvays look up. and i am so proud that iorked at such a great place and thank youery much. [applause] you know-- [laughter] who is that that represents the state treasury departments? theyre supposed to oversee-- there was a woman who was appointed years ago and she started pointing at all of these loopholeof where this money was disappearing within our government and she was silence. she was removed because he was finding out where it was going, and our government does not want us, didn't want this to know, andtillon't, still doesn't
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want us to know. so, that was a woman put in the position ofreat power and was silenced. >> there actually is state torney general's in every state for gover one of o state has an attorney general and as attorney generals are the chief financial regulator, almost like the secretary of the treasure other the most important person in that state that is in charge ofegulation so there have been a lot ostate attorney general's that have tried to to get involved with a very active state attorney general that try to point out the horrible business practices countrywide. the one of the crazy things, sitting on lehman brothers trading floor in 2006, and you are hearing about the genesis of the problem, the state attory general stephen back in 2006 were srting to question these business pctices. i will never forget being there on t trading floor talking t
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one ofur best analysts and he would say the state of south carolina is doing this or the state attorn genal massachusetts is doing that, and a lot of those people were ignored and i think one of the, one of the other tragedies of the faire of lehman brothers is tim geithner was head of the new york fed, and in those last days of lehman brothers, in september when all these bailouts were happening and all of these things were taking place but in that last weekend where we had the best and brightest finally of but that 31st floor, september 14, we had our ticket committee trying to, begging theovernment for help because they have helped fannie, they have helped bear stearns, they at health freddieac. we wantehelp in tim geithner was chairman of the new york fed. one of our big regulators and myeriously, fox no's recently
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reported his celphone was turned off on that sday evening around 7:00, when lehman brhers was really reaching out for assistance. lehman brothers, i just want you to remember one thing. i hate bailout. i despise them but lehma brothers was put to sle. lehman bthers, they took the pillow and put it over the face of lehman broers. they really did. >> why? >> ecause a lot of people say it was a moral hazard moments. they wanted, there were some people that wanted to make a stand. i think there's long history of tensions between richard fuld and hank paulson hankaulson was the secretary of the treury of the time. it was in many years ceo, head of goldman sachs and these were the arch, our competitors and in essence goldman sachs has become an oligopoly because he merrill
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lynch's gain, lehman is gone and bear stearns is gone and some of these other surviving banks are making more moy than ever. >> do you mean bank of america, citigroup? >> bank america, citigroup, cold ndin jpmorgan. steve the just again. morgan stanley. >> morgan stanley would be like theifth. >> how has writing this book changed your financial career? >> a lot in the sense that i not going to be on the sell side in a long time and that it means i'm not going to be working on a trading desk with richard fuld are any of these guys. [lghter] but i find it really ieresting week ago friday, i got a call from one of r best, iould call and the los alamos type clear physicists that really,
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deeply dply interesd credits derivatives and he was soappy about the book and so happy about his role. he wanted to thank patrick for the portrayal of credit analyst andy really felt proud. he said what you come up on the trading floor so, i went there for god was about 5:30 on a friday afternoon. 5:30 in the trading floor is half full. this is barclays bank now so this is barclays that bought the remlants of lehman brothers of this is lehman brothersrading floor ed 745, seventh avenue. i am back at the scene, the same trading floor cry used to work in a notice than the corner office, i said who was tha man in the corner office? and steve said to me, that is bob diamond. i said bob diamond, the ceo of barclays capital? he caid yes. and palp things have changed. thingsave changed in the sense
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that you have lessons being learned hopefully. you now have the ceo of barclays capital right there on the trading floor with the best and the brightest, paying close attention to what is going on, not up on the 31st floor completely away fr the battle group and battlefield. >> i have one question. you may comment at the beginning this was the end of capitalism in america. what did you mean? >> not the e but capitalism has been changed forever because first and foremost you have this, the fed window, the federal government has now been assistinbanks through the imary dealer credit facility. in other wor you have investment banks that are getting help from the government. that started with essentially their stearns and then you have all of the t.a.r.p. and the talf and l of these things that we
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passed in september, these initiatis really kind of help securitization and help lending start up again and because we see all of these programs and so much of this help from the talf and the t.a.r.p. and also you have goldman sachs and morgan stanley arnell ban holding companies, lehman requested the become a bank holding company in the days before the bankruptcy and tim geithner said no and morgan stanley and goldman sachs had been allowed to become bank holding companies of going forward you are going to have a pendulum swing where you are going to have a period of overregulation in terms of minute regulation of capital. he will have less levere and less real freedoms because you know, the problem is that things that so opaque ando dark, capitalism does not work without transparencies so many of the risks were so difficult to

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