the gaps argument and then you had your last slides saying we do see intelligent design in work today. so we can invoke that. i know a lot of people who would see that argument and say, oh, well, we haven't seen something like an intelligent designer like god in operation, though, so could you comment on that. >> yeah, that's right it's not an argument for god's existence. an argument for a designing intelligence, and that's because the principle of reasoning involved scientifically is based on repeated experience. ..

>> we're saying cause a., b., see, combination, have not demonstrated the power, name information but there is another cause that is known to have the power to produce the effect in question that causes intelligent, therefore that's

the best explanation. it's not the fallacy of arguing for ignorant therefore it is not a god of the gaps argument. it as it standard form of nonscientific reasoning. excellent question. >> steve, i was amazed that you would acally answer my e-mails. and i sent you one -- >> did you send me the nasty objection? [laughter] >> yes, that was a wonder i said even if all decent and parts and elements to a cell, it was still not be alive. life uses the information and i made the parallel over to the fact that the mind uses to bring. the brains not the mind. they aren't separate. and i wish you would say something to that. >> i think that is a very astute observation.

careful to qualify what we claim about dna. dna contains some ofhe information necessary to build a cell, but there are higher levels of information that are necessary to a ranging the byproducts of the products of the protein. and so the cell is a system that contains machines. it contains information, but it may be something beyond that. very richly integrated system. so it is important cdna is a necessary, the play of the dna is a necessary condition of undetanding life but there may be much more that we need to investigate, and i would mtion in particular the work of jonathan well, and richard were looking at ontogenetic information. the blueprint information that is responsible for organizing the proteins and other cell

types, the cell types into tissues, the tissues and organs, into body plans. there is a rich hierarchy of information involved in every living system. it's one of the things that makes the subjects of fastening. i think maybe we're getting a cue to stop. i think we're at the end, but i want to ask you a question about this very exciting period that we are in, and that your book has been a flagship for. can you imagine some of the other things that support it at e discovery institute in particular at the center for science and discovery enterprises that you think people should ow about that works in progress that are coming along that shore up and help defend this exemplary argument. >> we had charles here helping us with our summer mentoring program for young scientists just last week and we had a nice photo op in which we put his book in my book together. his epilogue was innocent of the ration unde inspiration guidebo.

and that was the work that richard is doing on the myth of junk dna. so look for the. e. and jonathan wells, paulson are involved in a very interesting research project on these higher levels of information. something by the way that is not in readily explained by neo-darwinism because of the neo-darwinists want to explain the origin of biological form at the lowest level of information in the hierarchy, mutations in the genome, or to build a moral organism you need higher level of organization, you can mutate dna and definitely and never build a new organism because you are not providing that higher level information. the ueprint information that is required. so those children have some exciting product. also there some fantastic work both experimentally on proteins and competition only on the

model of what mutations can and cannot do. so this whole program of research is such an argument for intelligent design, it's a whole resear program that we legion very fruitful direction for science. >> thank you, steve. ladies and gentlemen, think about whether you would like to be a part of this program by joining the discovery society or discover institute that we would welcome you. please thank you, steve, d all of you for coming tonight. [applause] wh

>> next weekend nearly 50 authors will gather in burnsville, north carolina, for the fourth annual carolina mountains literary festival. this year's theme is not mosaic. been in winston-salem, it's the bookmarks book festival. in new york, the jamaica market will host the queens book in hell for

>> from the 2009 virginia festival of the book in charlottesville, virginia, john grisham discusses his career as a novelist, his writing practices and his research on hiloan nonfiction title "the innocent man." mr. grisham's latest novel is "the associate." the program is 45 minutes.

>> john grisham, who is deborah carter? >> she was a cocktail waitress, among other jobs, 21, 22 years old in ada oklahoma was murdered in december 1981. raped and murdered in a very, very brutal episode. and it took the police five years to solve her crime. or they thought they solved it. they got the wrong guys. they convicted the wrong guys and send them to prison. sent one to death row. ron williams went to death row. he had never met deborah carter. and he spent 11 years in prison

and was exonerated 10 years ago, 1999, almost 10 years exactly. but he spent a total of 12 years in prison for the murder of deborah carter, and never met her. >> who was rhomboids and? >> ron williamson was a man i never met, never heard of him. he was one of the first big notorious dna exonerations in the late '90s. and i met him when i read his obituary. so i never got to see him obviously. but he was a fascinating character. when he was younger, many people in his small corner of oklahoma felt ron was the next mickey mantle. and ron certainly felt so. he had a nice ego. and he was a second round draft pick in 1972 of the oakland a's,

and went off to seek major league glory. thought he was going to make it. never came close. had a bunch of injuries, didn't take care of himself, started drinking and drugging, and pretty wild lifestyle. crashed and burned in the minor leagues. when he was 25 or 26 years old, and begin showing the first signs of some type of a mental illness, that was eventually diagnosed as being bipolar, all the wheels came off for ron williamson. he didn't help himself. he started self-medicating with booze and drugs. in 1986 or 87, he was arrested for the murder of deborah carter. again, a woman he never met. >> why did you choose of the story to be your only book of

nonfiction? >> twenty-one novels now and one book of nonfiction. i never thought about nonfiction. i'm not trained as a journalist. i never thought about it. i am a novelist. that's the way i think. i create fictionalized -- at the same time i am always looking for good stories. i am always on the prowl for good stories. i never thought it would be a real one. i read ron's obituary in "the new york times" early in december of 2004. >> nobody's juju to its? >> stumbled across it. opened the newspaper and there was. it was a picture of ron in court in ada oklahoma in april of 1999, the day he was exonerated. the same courtroom from which he been convicted and sent off to die. 12 years later he is in the courtroom. his photo was taken. and he and i were the same age, same race, same religion, same part of the world.

you grew up in a small town in oklahoma. i grew up in a small town in arkansas and louisiana in mississippi. a lot of similarities to a lot of similarities. and i thought how good this guy go to death row for 11 years and come whin five days of being executed? i mean, he was a dead man. oklahoma was about to strap him in and legally inject him. they had this all planned. he had given up your key was insane. nobody cared about that except his family. it was too good. but the baseball angle, i dreamed about playing rigidly baseball or i never got close but the fact that ron was a second round draft pick, you know, i know how good you have to be to be drafted. okay. but to be picked at number one player out of the state of oklahoma in the 1972 draft, i knew that he had to be real

good. anyway, all the pieces came together. it was too good of a story. once i got into it, i realized i couldn't, i was tempted, i didn't want to do all the work. i didn't want to do all the research. but i also knew that nobody would believe the story. nobody would believe this, if i wrote it as a novel. that's like bernie madoff. if you wrote that as a novel nobody will believe it. you couldn't sell three copies. it to good. so that's what often happens with the stories that are just too rich. you can't use them. you can't steal them as a novelist or you can do the nonfiction route, and that's what i chose with "the innocent man." >> so you go from reading the obit to what? how to become this book? >> you know, i had no idea what i was getting too when i

started. although i love the story from day one, i still love the story. as i've gotten into the world of wrongful convictions, i realize there have been a lot of exonerations, 235 now from the innocence project in new york and around the country. that's 235 fantastic stories just from a human drama and tragedy perspective. how can our system, the system that we all believe in, especially as lawyers, especially as a former criminal lawyer who never dealt with a wrongful conviction. if you believe in the system, if you think this is the best system in the world, how can you explain 235 exonerations? and that's the tip of the iceberg of ho can you explain the fact that we have sent 130 men to death row to be executed, only to see them walk away because they were not guilty or

didn't get a fair trial? it's a terrible system. it's got some terrible problems that have to be fixed. and once i got into it, once i get into the story i realized what the message could be just by telling this story, this man who was almost killed, was almost a victim of this very flawed death penalty system we have. and stories can go on. i could write a book about every exoneration. and there are a lot of books about exonerated after a lot of guys right there stories. and they are all fascinated. they have all the elements that make a great novel. especially a lot of tragedy and heartbreak. it's good stuff when you're writing books. >> so you read the obit. travel immediately to ada,

oklahoma. do you start to research the case? what to do a? >> ron left two sisters. inet and tells oklahoma, and renée close to dallas. i called both of the ladies and convince them that i was serious,. >> what it is a? >> they thought i was joking. >> did they know who you were? >> oh, yes. they are both big readers. and another store, ron became a huge reader on death row. we will talk about that in a minute if you want to. but i never heard them say he'd read my books on death row. he loved stephen king. he loved tom clancy. he loved john steinbeck, and he read the serious novels. he read anything he could get. there weren't a lot of books on death row. that's a different story. but i talked to his two sisters.

i said i want the exclusive right to destroy. and there were other people circling. there have been movie producers and tv producers been around, there have been soe rumors about books. again, this is such a great story and i want to go in fast, block it out. i wanted exclusive rights to their story and access to all the stuff being family photograph, albums, ron's little league baseball trophies. i eventually got everything. they loaned it to me. i gave him back. so i wanted the exclusive rights to get all he could out of these people, and they said fine. and so we struck a deal. and we all felt comfortable with it. i took off to oklahoma, and met some great friends. marco was the attorney for ron williamson, still a great friend of mine, still working on some the obama cases. sort of took me around and introduced me to the judge's, and a lot of players who were

involved in the story. tons of documents, trial transcripts. i got ron's prison recos. four boxes of ron's daily notes that he took on him in prison. disciplinary reports. the documents are just -- they fill up a whole room. and that's how the book came. once i had all that stuff i didn't know what to do with it. i met the family of debbie carter, the victim, her mom, her nice. they became friends. they reach the level of where we could trust each other. i talked to most of the players are guided and talk to all of them. i didn't spend too much time with the cops who were involved in the investigation. i knew what they were going to say because they had already set it under oath and drug. i had their trial testimony

undergrowth. i had their civil court depositions under oath. so i had been locked in. i had hundreds of pages of what they had already said under oath so i didn't have to go chase them down. so anyway, there was a whole research and investigative process -- >> wasn't new to you? >> it was all new. and i really struggled with issues that i guess a the journalist face everyday. if you have a shaky source who is telling a great story, and will swear to it, but you don't trust your source and you can't verify it elsewhere, what do you do? well, you don't use the story, as much as you want to. and i was continually confronted with issues like that. again, questions the journalist you with all the time.

i felt like there would be -- i knew the book would not be well-received by the people i was writing about, the prosecutor, the police, maybe other folks in the system. so i wanted to be, i wanted to be accurate, era and accurate when i talked about them so that increased the level of research, the level of scrutiny that the book went through by editors and you know, attorneys afterwards. so we were very careful. but it was a process that took 18 months, which for me is a longtime. i write a novel in about six months, which sounds fast but i mean, you start writing three or four, five pages a day over five, six months, you get a lot of pages. that's kind of the way i work.

and the notion of having to just verify every sentence, have a source, was pretty tedious. i'm not sure i would do it again. >> why was it important for you to establish what ada, oklahoma, is like? and what some of the characters, the two lead characters look like wax why is that important? >> i grew up in towns like data, church on every corner. friendly people. everybody knows everybody. they have 15000 people with the college was a little bit bigger that a lot as i grew up in the still i knew the area, i felt like it i had never been to ada before but that was sort of the way i grew up there every summer night and have to townsend little league ballparand you listen to the cargoes on the radio, and that's just the way i grew up. andt's the way i practiced law

for 10 years. pretty much, very much a small town hustler, looking for clients, looking for a way to baby bill and get the case. that's the way it is for most lawyers i think in ada. so i felt very much at home in that environment. i'm not a big city guide. obviously that's not where i want to stay, or not where i want to be. so i understood, and i really understood the work ethic, the christian influence, sort of harshness of many other religions or the denominations. ron was pentecostal, i am not, but i understoo how he was raised. >> why is that important for the reader? >> well, you have to put your reader in that place.

you've got to -- you have to take your reader a way to some other place that he or she has never been before. and to me that's good storytelling. that's what i always try to do. i wanted toeally capre the feel of this small town. and also in small towns, when there is a murder people want justice. they want it fast. they want somebody else to die for it. small town america, especially in this part of the world, oklahoma, arkansas, mississippi were i were i to a. they love the death penalty. and they want to use more often. those people are frustrated because, those people, the majority of the people in the south, southwest, midwestern, wherever, small town america, they want the death penalty used more often. they are frustrated by the fact

that these guys did on death row for 10, 15 years as the appeals drag on. they are frustrated that they wanted people executed. we are here in virginia. virginia ranks behind only texas in the number of people executed. so this is an execution state this is a death happy state, you know. let's use it more often. that's the way the majority of ople think around here. i was trying to describe that environment and those people. it's always been a paradox to me how people who are so stridently moralistic and christian canto passionately love the death penalty. i will never understand that because that's not what christ taught. but anyway, i wanted to sort of bring that into the book to try

to explain to the reader how these verdicts happen. and also, people have such respect for the authorities. so when you have policeman testifying, jurors believe it. when you have experts from the state crime lab, and and testify and match up heyer and fingerprints and all that, blood, jurors believe that. even though these guys are wrong, care analysis is junk science. it's been proven many times. and there are hundreds of people right now in prison because of hair analysis. it's junk science. but analysts from the state crime lab have been testifying with a great deal of certainty in virtually every state in this country for a long time. so anyway, i've wanted to show how trials happen. people say how do these -- how

do these convictions happen, these wrongful conctions. suddenly, as a country, as a culture, as a society we are starting to question things after 230 high profile exonerations, these guys walk out of prison after 20 ars and they were innocent. we got a question, you know, something. the police, the prosecutors, the experts, the junk science, the false confessions, all the things that go into this package of wrongful, how do these things happen? how do you get a wrongfu conviction? it's in "the innocent man." that case is a checklist. virtually everything except for wrongful id, identifation, wrongful eyewitness id, that's not the case. but all of the other facts that go in a wrongful conviction are in "the innocent man." so i wanted to bring all that together and just walk the reader through it. i didn't read any of this stuff. i had to find it and arrange it in a readable fashion. had a good dose of storytelling,

striving for accuracy. i can defend everything in there. but you know, i wanted the book to shock people. i wanted people -- the book to infuriate readers. it's been a pretty good job of that. >> were there, not to give away everything in "the innocent man," were lies told on the stand? >> repeatedly. i used a bunch of snitches, the old jailhouse snitch routine which is -- which is another rich source for wrongful convictions. and there were several snitches who were prisoners of themselves who the cops would drag out, offer a deal, and in return for

some testimony. i heard him confess. he confessed to me. he told me all about, you know, that kind of stuff. typical snitch testimony which is almost always bogus. when they arrested ron, when they finally got the warrant for his arrest, they had a bogus fingerprint analysis, okay? that was shaky, but using that, that was enough to get him the arrest warrant. once they got wrong in jail, that's when they built their case against him in jail. he supposedly said something to one of the prison guards. back i testified that he supposedly confessed to another one. that i testify. that's how they built their case against ron. and the topic it's all laid out

in the book. these people testify. he told me this. he said, all in jail, he said this, you know, whatever. so that's how the lying happen. you know, a lot of lies. >> where is dennis britt today? >> dennis fritz lives in kansas city and he is about to celebrate 10 years of freedom. on april the 15th, which is just a few weeks away, and dennis is one of the lucky guys. most of these exonerates, once they get over the euphoria of walking out of prison, that's why they are always smiling when they walkut after 20 years, 15 years, 10 years, reality sets in. and most of them are released without a dime, without a support network, without any kind of plan, without people.

society wants them to go away and shut up. . . the cops, sued the prosecutor, sued the state crime lab. ron sued the prison system. i mean, they sued a lot of people. and they filed the lawsuit about a year after they were how the it went through an extensive

period of discovery and eventually was settled. the terms were undisclosed. it was locked up by federal court order so i never knew and i never pride. i do know that the ada newspaper reported that they got 5 million bucks. i don't know if that's accurate. dennis and ron got some money. and dennis was smart with his. he invested it wisely. he got some professional help. he's put his life back together. dennis spends a lot of time now working with innocence projects, speaking around the country. you know, when you've been on trial for murder, he came within one vote of getting the death penalty. his vote was 11-1 to give dennis death. so because of that he did not go to death row. he went to the general population and survived for 11 years but, you know, you go through that -- you can give some speeches. people like to listen to you.

it's fascinating material. >> he has quite an interesting story. his wife murdered on christmas day. >> it was several years before this, his wife was shot in the head by some crazy kid next door and when dennis was working -- he worked for the railroad and he was out of town that day. he had a small daughter who was in the room with her mom when she died. you know, he survived that. he couldn't work for a while. he was trying to raiseis daughter and just a terrible story. picked himself up. dennis finished college. he was a junior high school science teacher. had a decent job and he was not from ada. dennis was from kansas city, but he had found his way to oklahoma. and he was trying to put his life back together. dennis was arrested -- dennis was suspected because the cs in their brilliance right off the bat, the murder scene was so

grisly they said, well, two people had to do this. it had to be a two-man job. there was no proof, whatsoever. it was just a hunch and that's what -- that's how a lot of wrongful convictions start. these cs get a hunch. you know, they know it all. they've been around. they've got -- they've got the experience. they get a hunch for something. this guy, you know, two or three or whatever, then they put blinders on and they lock into this tunnel vision whe they're right and they're going to prove they're right. well, the cops in this case right off the bat, well, it's so violent, the crime scene, it had to be a two-man job so they pursued this theory with no proof. and once they locked in on ron williamson, they realized ron didn't have any friends in town or very few friends. the only person he was hanging around with during this point in time was dennis fritz. and that was their theory.

that was their link. and that's howennis got sucked into all this and when dennis digent jail, he was arrested, they put dennis in jail and suddenly there were snitches who heard dennis confess or heard dennis say this and they brought in all these snitches and put them on the witness stand and that's how dennis got convicted. no physical proof. i mean, no viable proof. they had a state crime lab expert who matched some of dennis' hair and some of ron's hair to some scalp here and pubic hair found at the crime scene. it was a match, you know. totally disproven later by dna but anyway that's how they got dennis convicted. >> well, we'll leave the conclusion to people who want to

read the book. you said you would notant to do this again, take on a nonfiction project on this. is that definitive? >> no. it could happen tomorrow. if i see the right story. i've got the next two books sort of planned. >> novels. >> well, i'm finishing a collection of short stories for the first time -- well, some of these stories i have been playing around for 15 years. and they're finally getting wrapped up. it's going to be a short story collection published probably in october by doubleday. and that's the next project, and -- but the next legal thriller is already taking shape. if i saw a great idea in the newspaper, in the obituary section tomorrow, i'd probably

file it away and i might pursue it. but i'd be sort of hesitant to jump into it right now. ron's obituary was just -- the timing when i saw it, the timing was really good because it was december, and i wasn't doing anything. i just finished a book. and i wasn't looking for a story and there it was. and it all fell into place. i'm not sure it would happen again. but if i saw a story that i fell in love with, i know what i would do. i'd go write it. >> well, your most recent novel 2009, "the associate," by john grisham. where do you get the ideas for your novels? >> that's book number 22. i can go back to almost every booknd show you something in reality in happened.

my career was not that exciting. it only lasted 10 years. but generally something i have seen, someone i have known, a case was familiar with 20 years ago, whatever, almost every case goes back to a reality. and i'll take a fact situation, take, you know, what really happened, fictionalize it, sensationalize it, whatever, and try to piece together a story that starts with an opening that's compelling. you got to hook your audience. you got to hook your audience pretty quick. if you go to a movie and nothing happens in the first 10 minutes, you're probably going to -- you're probably in trouble. the movie is probably in trouble. that's a pretty good rule of thumb. and so i spent a lot of time -- you know, what's the great opening scene here?

how can you get the reader invested, you know, on page 1. that's often the easy part. there are a lot of great conflict scenes, whatever, the smoking gun or whater. then you see well, how is it going to end? and hopefully the ending is something that the reader is not he can't and go. and then how do you sustain the narrative tension for 300 pages? and i kicked that around for a lot of ideas sort of mentally and then when i can see the whole book -- when i see the whole story, i'll start the process of actually laying it out on paper, you know, an outline, chapter one, what happens. chapter two, what has. how does it end in chapter 40, 300 pages later or whatever. and that's a tedious process. sometimes the outlines takes

longer than the actual novel but the more time i spend on the actual outline, the easier the novel is. when i cheat on the outline i'll get in trouble with the book. and i still screw up and i still get lazy. that's a long-winded answer to say the ideas come from almost always from real life. now, having said that, i don't know -- i can't give you a specific example o where the idea for "the associate" came from. what's happened over the years is often people will say, i enjoy your books but i really loved your early stuff. at first that kind of bothered me, you know, like my books now don't live up to what -- and i realized we all do that. whether it's music or movies or almost anything in popular culture, once we discover someone and watch their career, we tend to say, well, i liked

his early stuff. i liked her early movies or whatever. that's kind of what we do. but i've also asked myself over the years. have i changed the writing style? it has not been intentional. so "the associate" was a deliberate effort to go back and recapture the suspension of "t firm," the pelican brief." the movies -- all three movies came out within a 12-month span. all three movies were huge with big casts. and all three movies are tv somewhere tonight, 15 years later. and looking back with the benefit of hindsight, those three were huge. they really paved the way for everything else. and so with "the associate," okay, i'm going to go back and

see if i can recapture the thrill, the suspension, all that stuff that went into those three books and that's why i wrote "the associate." there's no social issue, there's no soap box. i have to really watching the preaching as my wife says. it's just old-fashioned suspense. >> where do you write? you mention you write five or six pages a day. where do you write? >> well, right now we're sitting in downtown charlottesville just off the downtown mall, we live about 15 miles out in the country. it's about a 20-minute drive and it's very quite and i have an office behind the house, a separate building with no phones, no faxes, nothing on the internet. i mean, i'm not wired out there. i would never write a book online or subject to being hacked into. because of fear.

the computer that i wrote "the associate" on i bought it in 1993 and it has now written, i guess, 18 books and it's about to collapse. so i'm now in the process o buying a new one. i'm terrified about doing that. it's a very quiet room with no distractions. >> 1993. that's a pretty old computer. >> that's an old computer, yeah. it's a very old computer. >> what terrifies you about buying a new one. >> i have an apple laptop for emails and i don't spend a lot of time -- i have two kids who are in their 20s so they bought me a blackberry for christmas and taught me how to text so i feel like i'm really high tech these days. i'm sort of resistant to that kind of stuff and i keep telling myself, you got to grow up. it's the new -- we have these issues now with the kindle,

ebooks, you know, we're still kind of plowing through those issues and i'm probably the last guy who wants to try something new. what's terrifying is just -- i mean, look, a 16-year-old machine that i sat down this morning at 8:00 and did all my little normal daily routines, you know, on the computer, checked in here and there and added stuff and did about three pages this morning -- [inaudible] >> i go back tomorrow and read what i wrote today and i always fiddle and edit with it. that's a constant process. >> but nobody gets to see those first versions, do they, with the computer? >> no one ever sees the very first draft, no. because they never -- they never get printed.

now, the first thing i print is a true first draft. it's got a ton of mistakes and, you know, stuff i didn't catch. >> and do you keep those? >> my wife reads those. i finally gives those to my wife. she goes through with a pretty good edit. she doesn't really -- she reads r ntent, story, plot, characters, you know, is the story working? she always knows what the story is by the time i write the book. she doesn't know the ending 'cause i just want to see how she reacts to it. but she is -- she's very good about reading the first draft and saying, this character really is not working, okay? or i really don't like this part of the book. that's the type of editing she does. she has a red pen. she loves to use it. i'll get the first draft back

from her go through it again and clean it up and then that draft goes to my agent in new york eventually. and he works off that. and then we go back and forth, back and forth. we never cut corners on editing. a lot of big authors -- once they reach a point, turn in a book and say don't touch it. i'm done with it and that's -- that's a mistake. i'd be afraid to do that. my agent was my editor at doubleday for the first five or six books. david bought "the firm" in 1990 and he edited -- well, he edited 21 books now. and so we have -- obviously, we're very close and we have a close relationship. and as far as david is concerned and then the editors at doubleday and the copy editors,

there's always been this sort of a transparency in that they know they can say anything. nothing is off limits. you can question anything. you can question a subplot. you can question the character. you can question a word. if something doesn't sound right, it's on the table. and that's extra work for me but in the long run -- and there's not a lot of that. there'sot a lot of that. in the long run i think it makes for a better book. the two processes that i've described, the outlining and then the editing are, you know, by far the most unpleasant part of writing a book. but they're also the most important. now, the most unpleasant part of writing the book is the author photo. i really hate the author photo but every year we go through this process of what's the photo going to be. i've actually published two or three books with no photo which is the way i prefer to do it.

but doubleday always wants some kind of, you know, current photo. we don't cheat on the aging or dating. they're all current photos. >> what do you think, what does your kids think or what does your wife think seeing one of your books seeing your movie a walking through an airport and seeing your books everywhere? >> i hope we never take it for granted. the movies --e've sort of learned it live with them. the firm was the first movie that came out in the summer of 1993. that's 16 years ago. and there have been 8 or 9 otr movies since then. and almost all have been enjoyable. i've been lucky with hollywood. i only had one bad one, "the chamber" was the bad one.

and i've been lucky. ve never gotten all bent out of shape over the movie. some writers are furious because they destroyed their works or whatever. they're just movies. they don't change a word of the book. they're owned at the local cinema for a month and they're gone. they're on tv forever. it's someone's interpretation of what you've written. if you don't want to do that, then don't sell the film rights. if you sell the film rights, expect it to be something different and don't explain about it. if you don't like that, don't take the money. sos far as movies are concerned, we've always had fun with them. yes. you know, the kids -- the kids wall watch one on tv occasionally. or portions of one. as far as seeing the books in the airports, it's like -- it's sort of like the movies -- sometimes i still -- there's

somewhere, you know, traveling where i'm not expecting to see my face on a poster. i'lltop and kind of laugh, you know, and i'll always go over and watch the books to see if people are buying them. see how much activity we got going on. but it's really not -- it's probably the perfect amount of fame. if you value your privacy, it's not like i get stopped walking in the street. >> do you get recognized? >> yeah, i get recognized in certain places. where i'm from in mississippi and back in the memphis area, yeah, but again, people rarely intrude. i've never had a problem in public. i've never had felt, you kn, threatened. it's made me really appreciate people who are truly famous and cannot live a normal life and, you know, that's what truly famous deal with. they can't be normal.

my life is very normal and i keep it dull and quiet and that's the way i want to live. >> who are your favorite writers? >> contemporary i would say john lakray, the espionage writer, is my favorite. pat conroy is a friend. i love his books but he publishes once every 10 years so it's hard to get excited. stephen king is a pretty good buddy. we send books back and forth and always emailing and carrying on some foolishness. and i'll -- i'm always glad to get one of stephen's books. i can't say i always finish them but he doesn't finish mine either. i read the other lawyer, scott is a great writer.

i watch the other lawyers to see -- just out of curiosity what are they writing about. classical authors are dead authors. still probably john steinbeck is my favorite. i grew up reading john steinbeck. i still read a lot of it, an awful lot of it. but i'll take -- i'll take -- like last year i went on a mark twain binge. i love mark twain. i read some of his short stories i've never seen before. i read a great biography of mark twain by ron powers. it was just really well done so i'll get off on something like that and go whole year. i started flying about seven or eight years ago. >> piloting. >> piloting. so i read all these books about aviation. chars lindbergh. so i'll chase stuff like that.

a few years ago i went on a kick about world war ii and just read a bunch of books. so it's all over the place. it's not -- it's not always fiction. it's probably half fiction, half nonfiction. >> no william faulkner? >> well, i grew up in mississippi. and there's got to be a state law down there that requires all kids to read faulkner or requires all high school english teachers to teach faulkner. you know, some of it's -- it's not always accessible. aide great high school english teacher. she made us read faulkner but she also allowed us to read steinbeck. we had faulkner on one hd and steinbeck on the other. we all preferred steinbeck. sure, i appreciate the genius of faulkner. i appreciate his life and his commitment to his work.

but i'm not going to tell you i read faulkner for pleasure. occasionally, i'll read a faulkner book to see something i missed in the past because you got to have -- you got to have commitment. >> john grisham, his most recent book "the associate," it is a nol he's written one nonficon, 2006, "the innocent man" and coming out with a collection of short stories. thank you for being on book tv. >> my pleasure. i enjoyed it. thank you. >> john grisham is the author of 20 novels and the nonfiction book "the innocent man." john grisham appeared at the 2009 virginia festival of the book. for more information, visit vabook.org.

>> robert frank presents economic principles. the commonwealth club of san francisco is the hostf this event. it's just over an hour. [hitting theavel] >> good evening, and welcome to tonight's meeting of the commonwealth club of california. you can find us on the internet at commonwealthclub.org. my name is joe epstein. i'm a past chair of the commonwealth club's board of goveors and i'll be your chair for tonight's program. it is now my pleasure to introduce tonight's distinguished speaker, robert frank. author of the new book, "the economic naturalist's field guide: common sense principles for troubled times." robert frank is the professor of

management and a professor of economics a cornell university's s.c. johnson graduate school of management. he's[q a monthly contributor t the to the economic view column which appears on sundays in the "new york times." until 2001, he was the goldwyn smith professor of economics, ethics in public poicy of cornell college of arts and sciences. he has served as a peace corps volunteer in rural nepal and a chief economist for the air and he was a professor of american civilization at the school of advanced social science studies in paris. some of professor frank's previous books include choosg the right pond. and this shows how important status is. and how we pay for our status and how the race for status is bad for society. he also wrote passions within

reason where he discusses t idea that emotions have important roles in decision making. he wrote the winner take all society where he discusses how our current economy is moving towards a state where there are very few winners who take very much while the rest of us are left with very lite. other books include mioeconomics and behavior, luxury fever, what price the moral high ground, falling behind and, of course, the economic naturalist field guide, the subject of tonight's presentation. robert frank co-authored the book, "the economic naturalist's field guide" with current federal reserve chairman ben bernanke and he co-authored the book, the winner take all society with philip cook and it was named notable book of the year by the "new york times" and was included as the ten best books for 1995. professor frank holds a b.s. degree in mathematics from the georgia institute of technology and he also holds an m.a. in

statistics and a ph.d. in economics from uc berkeley. so let's please give a warm commonwealth welcome to professor robert frank. [applause] >> thank you, joe, and to the mmonwealth club for inviting me. i'm a regular listener to the commonwealth club lectures. we hear them on wsky in ithaca, new york. they've been great over the years and i'm honored to be in your company. i'm going to start by making a prediction. you'll, of course, be -- you don't need any warning from me to be skeptical of predictions made by economists. they've not turned out well over the years. i'll predict if you asked economists, professional economists today who's the intellectual father of their discipline, you'd get 998 out of 1,000 responding adam smith.

that's the clear consensus, i think, among my contemporaries. and smith's modern disciples would cite his celebrated invisible hand idea. the idea that if you turn selfish people loose in the marketplace and tel them see your own advantage, barter with each other, had end result will be the best possible outcome attainable for a society of whole. that claimings hollow these days. the invisible handas not something adam smith put i his terms. his modern disciples is more enthusiastic of these ideas. he was amazed you could turn selfish people in the marketplace and sometimes get good results and it was always qualified in that way. still, it's a major intellectual advance. the idea thatro