many kids. so they had open lunch. i didn't like to see kids with the fast food or coming out of the grocery store with the pie in their hand. you raise a good point. it's not a huge issue. but it is an issue. :comment on twitter. guest: a little bit of everything, to be honest. i think school operators do the best they can. some research shows that food in cans are more nutritious than fresh. it is a freshly picked, stays in the refrigerator, and does not lose nutrients. there is a provision in the bill to take a look at a pilot study using organic items.

with the increase reimbursement rate, you will see an emphasis on minimally process, or things that are not overly processed with the things that have added a sodium and sugar. host: one more phone call from jennifer. appelachia.io and have alachu they get the $600 per month for a family of four. they need to start drug testing these mothers because they are using the money to buy sudafed to make the methamphetamines. host: what will you do going forward? guest: there will be some things

in the very beginning stages. some of the efforts will be to reduce the paperwork burden. we should see some guidance on that, even in the coming school year. facebook reached 500 million members this year. up next, look at founder mark zuckerberg in the inner workings of the company. it is the subject of "the

facebook effect" by fortune magazine senior teeth brighter david kirkpatrick. this event is one hour and 20 minutes. [applause] >> thank you very much. is a pleasure to be here and one of my favorite cities which i've visited many times because over the years i've spent so much time writing about microsoft mostly and i used to come to this bookstore downtown. it is a new location in one of my favorite store so it is great to be here. anyway, why did i write a book about facebook? well, i did write about technology for fortune for about 20 years and in the summer of 2006, i had the good fortune to meet mark zuckerberg kind of just because they called me up and a pr person said do you want to meet mark zuckerberg and i actually had to think about it at the time. okay. and then i met him and he totally impressed me from the first time i met him. it is interesting to recall the meeting i had with him which was

in the first week of september, 2006, was at the height of the newsfeed controversy which many students of facebook will know was the biggest protest of its members that ever occurred, by far much bigger than the recent privacy controversy on a proportional basis. 10% of the members of facebook were actively protesting the service, and what struck me in meeting him at the height effect was even though he spent the night before staying up all night writing a letter of apology to the members, he was not even interested in talking about the newsfeed controversy at our lunch. he only wanted to talk about the long-term vision of what he thought he was building and why he was doing it and how he thought the world was changing, a very big picture. at the time he was 22 years old and i remember thinking when he walked up, could not believe he was ceo of the company. he looked like, you know, too

young to be my kid practically. and he was with chris hughes who was one of his cofounders who looked even younger than him and these guys look a little older now. they still are very young. they still are only 26. anyway i wrote a piece why facebook matters and that kind of got me off on track of thinking hard about facebook and i was like you that i had that early exposure. facebook had 9 million members at the time when i first met him, and then it just kept getting vigor and bigger at an incredible pace. i decided this thing was becoming much more important than most people realized and was likely to continue to grow quite dramatically. so in january 2008, i had asked zuckerberg if he would be interested in cooperating with me if i would write a book and without even thinking about it, he said go for it. so i kind of had no choice but

to pursue it after that. it was an amazing opportunity because he really opened up the doors of the company completely wide, and i have never had so much cooperation from a company as a journalist as i had from them. it is kind of incredible to me that they were so open, but there is a certain logic to it actually. because facebook uniquely is founded on a belief in transparency and an openness and zuckerberg is the one for home all that flows. he really does practice what he preaches, not to a complete extent but at least when i change to working with a journalist who was trying to write about his company he was amazingly open and basically told all of his employees and friends to tell me anything i ask them. in fact there were repeated occasions when i was doing interviews at facebook and frequently they would need a pr

person sitting there and i would ask the question and the employee would turn to the pr person and say, can i answer that? they would say yeah, you can pretty much be open with anything. they never said no. i mean it was amazing and if you ever write about companies they always say no, no don't talk about that. that was really why i wrote the book because i found i had this amazing access and i also had an image in my own head of the significance of this phenomenon and how it was continuing to grow. and you know not to pat myself on the back but when i asked him about whether he would cooperate with me they had 55 million users and today they have over 500 million so i feel like i made the right gamble on this company. so, you know, i think it is important just a little bit and i don't have a timer appear. i am hoping we will have a lot of questions and discussions

because it is really fun to talk about facebook and there are so many lenses that one can apply to this incredible company. but i thought it would be worth just quickly describing in my opinion what facebook does, what makes it unique. because there have been social networks before facebook and there probably will be some version of social networks after facebook but the question really is a pretty profound one, why did this service grow to 500 million when other services that existed when it started, notably myspace, friendster, orchid, those for a particular all of which one time or another each had 50 million users. and more or less withered away or turn into something completely different. there are several reasons. but the biggest single one is that facebook is based

around genuine identity. on facebook you have to really be yourself in order to get the benefits that the software is designed to give you. in other words you can pretend to be someone you are not but you won't really have a lot of friends because the whole point of facebook is to connect with people you really know and they are not going to notice you if you don't use your real name. if you tell all of your friends they are under a pseudonym may be. i have one friend who is a famous novelist in new york. because he is famously can't really is facebook the way it is supposed to be used because he is always being bugged because he is famous so he is on there under a maid up name and he did go around telling all his friends, this is now me. i'm closing my facebook profile and turning it into a page. some people do that but the point is not to contradict myself but facebook is based around genuine identity. all the other services most notably myspace, really were all about role-playing, pseudonyms, handles and pretty much the internet until facebook came along was a

place of primarily anonymity and pseudonyms and very few people use their real name and anything they did on the internet like on aol i was david 406 and there wasn't room in an e-mail address to use your full name. but it is interesting, i just realized lately i haven't used it until after i used -- wrote the book i always resisted this anonymity of the internet about if i'm going to be on their identifying myself there is no reason not to use my real name. so my e-mail address is david underscore kirkpatrick at yahoo!.com which i gave myself in 1995 so some part of me was kind of oriented towards this mindset of identifying myself and probably wasn't as offended by some aspects of facebook as certain other members of my generation which is the baby boomers. so this identity is big. is important to keep this in

mind because by being your real self and using your real name is a lot of things become possible that couldn't have happened on other servers. and another thing about facebook which is quite distinct is that it is -- its interface has always been extremely simple. it is a very simple looking service and impact when it started it was generally a simple service. didn't even do very much when mark zuckerberg first launched at harvard in february of 2004. it really only allowed you to put up your name and a little bit of information about you, put up what classes you are taking at harvard and connect to other people. none of the features that we use so much now where there. and that's very simplicity was one of its great assets because a lot of the other services that had preceded it were very calm for catered and they were typically created by older programmers who were really

really talented programmers and did too much. they put too much in there. there was this service called club nexus which was actually the very first college oriented social network which was launched at stanford in 2001 by a guy named orchid kupchan who later went to google and created orchid which was named after him and when he was at stanford is a graduate student he built this very very deeply sophisticated multifeatured social network but the problem was it had so many capabilities that when you were using it you really didn't know if anybody else was using it because there were so many things that could be done at any given time and therefore it never created a much critical mass where is on facebook you very quickly could tell other people were using it and it made you want to use it more. and then connected to the simplicity of the design is something else i think is really critical that actually explain

certain things that have happened to facebook in subsequent years and that is that zuckerberg really is a serious geek and a programmer -- programmer and he thinks that the program if he really believes this product is basically poor and it constantly must be improved or some other internet startup will come and e. twos launch. so he has never, never been satisfied with the design, with the features or the functions so he continually changes it as anybody who uses it will no. and that leads to certain frustrations with the users but it has allowed them to stay ahead of the competition and it really was a big contrast with friendster and myspace, both of which were really created by people who were more into it for the social thing. they were really party people, both tom anderson and chris dewolfe and what's his name, the

friendster guide, i forget his name. but they all were really partiers and they created services because they like that sort of thing. they liked socializing that they didn't bring a technical mind suit -- mindset to it and didn't hire sophisticated enough for grammars and as a result they couldn't do what facebook could do. zuckerberg uniquely is a computer scientist and also somebody who studied psychology and thinks a lot about human relationships and actually is a fairly social person. by what you might hear he is always had lots of girlfriends and lots of friends so the combination of all those things worked out well for him. so, i title the book "the facebook effect," the inside story of the company that is connecting the world. many people asked me why it is called "the facebook effect." really, because initially i was planning to write a different book in a sense. that is something that's was in

the studio title but still has a lot of assets. originally i thought i was going to write a book about all the ways facebook is having an impact on the world and it does have an amazing impact. politics, on government, on business, on marketing, personal identity, privacy, friendship, social life, education, a lot of arenas, but then once i started working on it and i realized how much access i was getting and all these people at facebook kept telling me more and more amazing stories about things that happened during the company's history i realize i have the opportunity to really write a very thorough history of a company that was really going to be fun to read, so then i kind of took the effects of an sort of hung that off the armatures the history and it worked pretty well because by telling the history in detail you understand why they have

done certain things and how they got to be the kind of company that has these effects. but i do not think overstating it to say facebook's effect is truly changing modern life. it is changing its not only in the united states. just to give you a few numbers, facebook now has about 130 million active users in the united states. it has over 500 million active users worldwide although they haven't announced that figure, but it does that make well over that figure today. it is gaining about a billion new users every day. so it will possibly hit a billion by the end of next year. that is very possible. if its growth rate continues it will do that. so, it is a big, big, date, big, big service. when you look at something like politics, i actually opened the book although i do, the first chapter is all about mark and it

takes us from there. actually has a prologue that precedes the first chapter which begins with a story about a young programmer in a coastal city in colombia in january 2008, who got really fed up with the far guerrilla movement which effectively had taken the entire country for years and in the middle of the night out of sheer frustration created a group of protest against farc, simply saying no more killing, no more kidnapping, no more lies, no more farc. that was the whole message, nothing but that. sick of these people, stop killing my country. country. so he invited 100 facebook friends which was pretty much all of his facebook friends in facebook was popular among english-speaking young people in colombia in january 2008. he went to bed at 3:00 a.m., woke up at nine in the year 1200 members in the group.

which got his attention. and then he went to the beach because it was -- i don't know, anyways he was going to the beach and he came back from the beach and had a number -- met another couple of thousand members in the group. as he said that is when i decided no more going to the gym i'm going to work on this. you know, it was vacation and he was a silly kind of kid that he really hit on something that was the message that people wanted to hear at that moment in his country. a month later to the day, that group led to what i believe is the largest demonstration of any type in recent world history, 10 million people went into the streets of every city and town in colombia with a very simple message, no more farc, no more killing, no more kidnapping and of course farc still exist but are really change the whole landscape of colombia and politics when that occurred. not only did 10 million people

in colombia go out into the streets but an estimated 2 million people demonstrated around the world in cities all over the world the colombia population of the sympathetic population, even places lake dubai and tokyo. there were significant demonstrations that same day. so that is an example of a dramatic example of facebook having this political impact because of its unique viral nature, where if you put a message on facebook that is a message that other people are prepared to receive, it can just spread faster than probably any communication system that is ever preceded it. your friends, like the message, therefore they may be just say like these days due to the facebook design as it is and their friends say that they liked it and if they are responsive to the message then they may clinic they liked it and something can just go through incredible populations.

so if you know when you talk about "the facebook effect" in politics because of this extraordinary capability, when people are upset anywhere on the planet today about anything, whether it is a pothole on their blog or the government of their country being corrupt the first place they typically turn is to facebook because it is it is a broadcast platform that is in the hands of any individual which has extraordinary power to disseminate messages among large populations of people. there has never been anything like that in the hands of ordinary people. it is a very landscape altering phenomenon. and you know we have heard it had a big impact on the election of barack obama. that is one way people have already tuned into this message, but it has been very very important in countries like indonesia, egypt and of course i ran where we have heard a lot about facebook organizing

the protests against the election results last year, when was obey had the election stolen from him via ahmadinejad. and was obey primarily communicated with his followers on facebook and iran. and it is interesting why they didn't turn it off. they turned it off a little bit here and there but one of the reasons the mullahs did not turn off facebook in iran during the protests against the election is because they and their families and friends were using it to matt. they just weren't using -- facebook have become even by last summer such a big infrastructure part of the way communication happened in iran that it was a simple matter of turning it off because that would really inconvenience a lot of people who weren't protesting, and you know in countries like indonesia where "the new york times" did a very good article about facebook's political impact in indonesia and the summary is that in indonesia where there are now 30 million members of facebook which is not that

many people because of the country at three or 400 million but pretty much everyone who is on the internet and what has happened in indonesia over many many decades is that a small elite has made all of the decisions. there was nothing you could do about it. it was basically a corrupt government whether they were one party or another. they were all, the business leaders were all fighting things any very small circle and facebook came along and now 30 million people have a broadcast platform and they are not being quite. if they see something the government does they don't like they are speaking up. the leaders are out in indonesia. because they don't like not to be able to make all the decisions by themselves. they do want the people to be telling them what they think. that is not the way it is supposed to work for them. you now and in that sense it really brings something approximating a more democratic mindset. it is a democracy but it is an apartment tool that is quite extraordinarily powerful.

"the facebook effect" is also a big factor in marketing. that is a big place that things are changing because of facebook. if you are really in any kind of business today you effectively have to be thinking about facebook and probably using it. proctor & gamble which is the world's biggest advertiser is now putting more and more emphasis on facebook to the point that the longest standing facebook ad guy who was employee number three in seniority there now was just assigned full-time to only work with proctor & gamble. they are such a big advertiser. but also if you own a small local business, facebook and ian extraordinarily powerful tool. i'm quite certain that elliott day books, haven't checked but i'm sure they have a facebook page and i'm sure it does a lot for them, and even if you have like a wedding photography business or a dry cleaning store, facebook can have a tremendous benefit for

your business because you can reach out to your potential clientele and one of the many reasons why it is so powerful is that you can target messages on facebook in a way you never have been able to target them on any medium in history. so because people on facebook go on and put their real name and their real data and their age, their gender, their location, their interests, even though facebook doesn't tell you as an advertiser who that person is with all those capabilities and those characteristics, they will allow you as an advertiser to select ads that only go to women over 35, who live on the east side of seattle, who say they like coldplay for example, if you wanted to. you could buy that add and anybody in this room could go on facebook and by that ad. at a self-service. would probably cost you 65 cents for every time somebody clicks

on a message like that. so if you are a local business, this is a really powerful tool but it also can be used by national and local businesses. and this issue of targeting is a very significant issue in the study of facebook because even though it is a wonderful thing, it could turn negative. you know we have already heard a lot of complaints about the ads that people see in gmail, if you use that e-mail service from google where they watch all your e-mails and they basically read all your e-mails and then they figure out what you are interested in. not people, people don't do it. computers do it that they go rhythmically calculate what you might be interested in and show you ads that some people find very creepy because they are so exact weight of relevance to you. if that creepiness started to kind of seep into facebook which it really hasn't yet, they could really begin to turn people off.

they certainly have the data to do that. this actually goes to another issue, which is mark zuckerberg's question of whether he really wants to make money or just wants to change the world and one of the reasons that you haven't seen that kind of creepy advertising and facebook come even though they are fully capable of doing it to you, it's because zuckerberg is far more interested in building a service that extends itself to every single person on the planet who uses the internet than he has been making a short-term gain. and in fact recently he was trying to argue that, because in this recent privacy controversy which some of you might've heard about about, fairly vociferous, he gave a press conference a few weeks ago in which he mentioned my book by the way, which is very cool, but he also was trying to demonstrate improved to reporters at this press conference that he was make it all these privacy changes just in order to better target ads,

and he said if i was really interested in making more money i would have sold his company in 2007 when microsoft offered $15 billion for it. he didn't say all of this but he sort of suggested it. he would have made $3.5 billion personally if he had sold the come for me in the fall of 2007 when he was 23 years old. he was offered a concrete deal. in fact, microsoft wanted to buy it so badly that when zuckerberg said no, he went back and constructed this very elaborate plan where microsoft only acquired facebook over the course of five or six years during which time zuckerberg would retain control, so he would still be able to do everything that he does but microsoft would just be gradually increasing its ownership and zuckerberg wasn't interested in that either. so he is a very peculiar kid as i think most of us would agree, but it is that peculiarity which

has somehow bizarrely enabled him to build a service that has 500 million people using it six years after it started. so, you know, zuckerberg is quite an extraordinary character and the book is largely a biography of him among other things. there've been an awful lot of great stories about mark and the interactions he had with investors, especially the investor story since he never really wanted any investors. he just sometimes had to have them because they needed money to buy servers or something like that, but he has never been a particularly commercially minded person. and he has observed himself that even though he is never try to make facebook a big monetary, monetization engine to use the word they use on the internet or a big platform for advertising, no matter what he did with the service, it just so happens that people that he hired were able to figure out

ways to make a lot of money. and this year they are going to have revenues that will probably be in the vicinity of 1.4 billion. and honestly that is without trying very hard. facebook, with the kind of user numbers and time spent that it has and another statistic i didn't tell you. the average american spent seven hours a month on facebook according to nielsen, the average american user so that is 130 million times seven hours a month. that is how many hours of being spent on facebook so certainly if they wanted to exploit that commercially and figure out ways to show those people more ads and make our money, they definitely could do that. but they have chosen very deliberately to put that off thinking that it is much more important to basically create a service that goes to everybody on the planet and the way zuckerberg talks about it is if and when we reach our goal of getting everybody then we will start thinking about the monetization.

but, privacy is obviously -- and zuckerberg is the key to understanding what facebook does and why it keeps getting in trouble. he has sort of two minds about privacy. on the one hand, he created facebook because he was so passionately committed to the idea of transparency was basically enveloping the world and the data was really about uy freely but no matter what we did, and it was already starting to happen, and this was one of the fundamental trends in the world was the growing transparency of data of all types but especially data about us. and on the other hand, we recognized from the beginning that if he didn't give its his users control over their data, they wouldn't share as much, so ironically for a service that has gotten in trouble over privacy so many times, facebook from the beginning

has always offered more privacy controls than any other service that has ever existed on the internet i far. ..

>> at the level about keeping information, so he feels that facebook is going to remain relevant and not get bypassed by some other entrepreneurs it has to move with the attitude and capability to change. and we are trying to position facebook a little further into the future world. they push us a little bit more on sharing. and this year they went too far with the everyone privacy setting and introducing a whole set of services and enabling facebook to be used all over the internet. it sort of starting sinking in on people, a lot of people are going to see a lot of things that i do that i might not be comfortable about. they had to pull back.

as with most things with facebook, they take four steps forward, half a step back, and keep moving forward. i think that kind of happened again. all they did to deal with all of the criticisms they were getting about privacy from senators and privacy people and a lot of bloggers, they reintroduced the ability to tune back the visibility of your information so that if you don't want everyone to see anything about you, you basically are only forced to show people two things, your name and if you put a photo up, your photo. those were a few things after the changes a week ago, taking a half a step back, those are the only two thing us can't control. before that, ever since last december, your friend list, photos, and a lot of other things were by default and definition, public information. most of us hadn't fully realized that during the interval between december and a few weeks ago.

that was the case. but the reality is -- ironically, very few people are going to go in and make those privacy changes. most members of facebook are going to leave it alone just like they always have. and very few people are going to be unhappy. and he knows that. but he had to satisfy the critics by introducing these controls. and i think some people should use them. and probably a lot more people should use them than do use them. i can certainly say for myself that i've always had my information on facebook set to the most private settings which is only my friends can see most of the personal data about myself. and that's very characteristic of my generation. and my daughter on the other hand, she's 18, hasn't done that. friends of friends, fine, let them see my stuff. but she still has a lot of privacy controls. because she's not friends with her dad on facebook. which means that i can't see all of those party photos that her

friends put up about her; right? whatever she might be doing and the status updates about her boyfriend, i don't get access to that. if you think about it, even these kids who are so comfortable sharing information about themselves realize that there's some limits they can take advantage of to their own benefit. and it's actually very typical for high school kids not to friend their parents. even though they are completely open to all of their peers. that's -- that is a form of serious privacy protection. but you can expect the facebook is going to continue doing this for the foreseeable future. making changes that are a little bit aggressive, encountering resistance, taking a little bit of a step back and booming on forward. for the time being, i don't see any signs that the pattern is going to end. i talked a the bit about how global facebook is. before i wrap up this part, and

get to your questions, i want to emphasize of -- americans frequently -- in general americans don't think much about the rest of the world anyway. as you probably realize. when you comes to facebook, it's as much that way as anything. we use it a lot in the united states. but it's used more in the other countries. even canada, the percentage penetration is dramatically higher than it is in the united states. in the uk, about 43%, i believe, of all citizens of all ages are on facebook, compared to maybe 35% in the united states. and countries like little iceland, 52% of all of the population of iceland, versus 100,000 people. even in countries like singapore and hong kong, and turkey, italy, the percentage is amazing. particularly among the educated people and the elites in these countries. in certain countries, almost literally everybody in the elite

uses facebook. like in italy, it's pretty much become the de facto way to communicate among the educated class. you know, e-mail is significantly reduced in turkey and other countries. a lot of latin american countries, now columbia is one of those country where people are using facebook as the primary means of communication. it's a real communication medium, i say it's the next phase of communication after e-mail. just to throw in something that i should have said earlier, the reason it's so different as a communication medium is pretty basic. if you think about every form of personal to personal communication we've ever used before facebook, the way we did it was we sent a message to another person. we initiated some kind of outbound communication. whether it was sending a letter, telegram, writing an e-mail, sending an im, whatever, i chose you as a recipient of my

message. and with facebook it's not like that. with facebook, you do things on facebook. you are friends by vir cuff of having effectively subscribed to information about you, have information sent to them automatically by the system. i don't say send my friend pam a message about me. i do it and because she's my friend on facebook, she see it is. some of my friends might not see it, because it's actually all very highly automated. even though you can say don't show me information about this person, do show me more about that person, the system also observed your behavior. if you click likes on things that i do and responded to updates that i put on facebook or any other way interacted with me, the system takes note on that. when i put the status update, they are more likely to show it

to you than somebody else who you never commented about or interacted with. in effect, it's automating communication in a way we've never seen communication automated. it really is not initiating a one to one outbound message even though the message is received by your friend. so i just -- you know, just finishing up on the global thing which is what i was in the middle of talking about. you know, of 500 million users of facebook, 400 -- 375,360 million of them roughly are outside the united states. it's really changing the social and political landscape a lot more in those of -- in some of those countries than it is here. to have a tool like that this is such an incredible empowerment tool changing society to become more open is a much bigger deal even in a country like chile, or

paraguay, or jordan, or israel is more like the u.s. you can't name a major country, you can't name a country expect for north korea and china, i can't think of another one where facebook is not one of the major tomorrows of communication now being used. and in most cases, the largest social network. one or two quick final thoughts on the future of facebook. we can talk about this. facebook doesn't want to a web e that's hard to realize. long term facebook's goal is to avoid being something other than a service on the internet. to take this incredible scale they've achieve and the fact they turned themselves into a platform used by applications made by others and extent that to basically every web site on the planet that chooses to use their service and basically bring your friend relationships

wherever you go on the internet. they, to be infrastructure that allows you as a member of facebook to sort of bring a social experience everywhere that you co. -- that you go. not even only everywhere that you go on the internet. because as we all increasingly carry around cell cell cell phor mobile devices that are internet connected which we are all going to be all the time, whatever is on the internet is on our person and pretty much live all the time. that's -- if it's not happening now, it's going to be happening five minutes from now. and facebook wants to basically allow us whatever we are doing to be able to invoke our friends, to find out if you are walking down the street, what stores on this block did my friends like? facebook will make it possible within the next two years, easily. it's already allows you to find out when you go to certain web sites, hundreds of thousands though, you know, which friends like that web site or like that message on a web site or any other of these new things that

are happening because of some of the recent changes. they think they can avoid being destroyed by another entrepreneur by kind of going underneath the covers and becoming just another piece of the infrastructure of the internet. and we can talk more about that, it's the little technical. but it's very important thing to understand. and it's also relates to facebook's long-term potential to become a really powerful business. because if they became infrastructure, and all of us maintained our identities there and sort of used their system to send these messages in and out of their hub whenever we were going anywhere on the internet, they could include advertising in that infrastructure very effectively which was incredibly well targeted to us and make an enormous amount of money because any web site would probably want to show ads from facebook because they could be so exactly targeted to anybody who went to

that web site. and if facebook shared just a little bit of the revenue with every -- with every web site that the doing that, they could make a lot of money for a lot of web sites and a huge amount for themselves, and that very possible will happen. in fact, it hasn't happened yet, they are holding off on the monitorrization things. that's just thoughts about my book. i'd love to hear your questions. so. thanks. [applause] [applause] >> okay. speak up loudly so they can hear you on c-span. >> what form is the congressional regulatory effort likely to take? >> actually, it's a really important question what's going to happen with regulation and facebook? i mean facebook's scale is so big that governments cannot ignore it. they don't always like what they see. they certainly don't like what they see in countries like egypt and indonesia, and any country that has an even slightly

repressive regime hates facebook and would like to regulate it out of existence. that's something they will see more and more. even in democratic countries like our own, there are very legitimate questions about whether we can trust one company to maintain all of this data about us. and it's not a given. even if you decide you trust mark zuckerberg personally who has this absolute control over facebook, at age 26, and seems to make generally pretty decent decisions, in my opinion, anyway. he might not maintain that control. maybe he'd get hit by a truck. and new ceo would come in and all of your data is still going to be there. would that successor person have the same attitude toward it that he does? you just can't know that. so i think governments -- i've already started looking at it with great interest and concern and you'll see that grow dramatically over time. and another aspect of the

government interest is that there's -- as an identity registry which is what they are, a lot of governments feel threatened by that very fact. because they see themselves as in the role of maintaining identities for their system. governments issues passport and driver's license. you show government-issued id when you go through the security line; right? actually, it could get to the point that facebook is a more reliable repository of data about you than any card that the government issues you. at that point, governments might say, wait a minute, you can't do that. and who -- what did -- maybe they will try to take it over. i have no clue. but it'll be a big deal. >> do you think that the -- as they grow i'm presuming the growth is driven by advertisement. if they increase advertisement themselves, does it encourage a backlash against the service? >> they think that.

that's why there's not much ads there, as i said. so, you know, this is one the things that many people think killed myspace was it looked like time square. it wasn't just the ads, it was the whole design philosophy was laissez faire, but there were a lot of ads, very prominent and blinking. if it goes too far, people don't like it. but this is -- the idea mark zuckerberg has is that if -- an ad doesn't even have to feel like an ad. if it is information that you really find useful and interesting, it won't offend you. this is the -- this is the secret that they are trying to achieve so that they won't screen people out the way that g-mail does. they want to figure out a way, it's going to be hard and it's going to take them a long time and they are going to have to work closely with advertisers and regulators and a lot of work

to make it work. they may succeed. it could be they will succeed in finding a way to send commercial information without it feeling intrusive. one thing mark zuckerberg points out, commercial information is not in itself offendive. if you look at what defines people's identity on facebook, the majority of it is commercial. music you like, movies that you like, books that you like, tv shows, those are all commercial products. and people are willingly putting them on their facebook profile as part of their personal identity. younger people in particular will even put, you know, act deodorant as one of the things they like. i'm not going to do that. if you are 25, you might. and so there's a lot of opportunity for these brands and commercial entities to send messages that really are local. but figuring that out and getting just the right balance

is hard. somebody had a hand up over here before. >> i have read this for people who allow the privacy are only about 30,000 people and generally the media who just takes a complaint louddy. does the other side not care? >> i don't put it that strongly. but you are on track. they had a quit facebook day. 30,000 is the number of people that quit. 30,000 out of 500 million, that's not going to send a strong message. i do think the whole recent privacy controversy which got so much publicity. in my opinion, you raise the alarm when you see something go wrong. they did. and the bloggers -- it wasn't just bloggers and press, it was

four senators that sent a facebook demanding they explain why they took the path they did, the privacy commissioner of canada, a lot of leaders in the eu, and countries all other the world has been aggressively asking facebook to justify it's action. people who were thinking about of themselves as guardians of the public have been speaking out. the public itself has not been speaking out. the public has not noticed there was a controversy. the average user of facebook would not be able to tell you there was a privacy controversy, and they couldn't care less. >> isn't it also possible, i mean this thing as grown so fast, so quickly that the people who are currently engaged in facebook, and the ones who are most active and maybe it's, you know, sort of younger and sort of whether it's teens or 20 somethings or 30 something, it hasn't even been around long enough for people to realize the ramifications that sharing all of that information over a

longer period of time and it can be used for good, but it can also be used for ill. and can you talk to that? >> i think that's true. i think it has been around long enough for people to realize that the ramifications of sharing all of that information are generally fantastic for their lives. and that they love getting all of this great information about the people they care about. if that wasn't the reason -- if that wasn't true, you wouldn't have the average of 130 million people spending seven hours a month there. there's something about it they really like. it is true that -- and this is often said of young people that they don't think hard enough about the implications, particularly of all of the photos of themselves partying widely that their friends put up and tagged them in, et cetera, et cetera, how's it going to look when they apply for a job and don't get the job which has already happened plenty because of information that somebody has been able to find them about on

facebook. a common rebuttal from a 22-year-old might be when i'm in the position of hiring people, i'm not going to care if they have photos like that on their facebook page. and it very well maybe that values on that kind of thing are shifting. but my own opinion is that a lot of people share way too much about themselves on facebook, and i say always that it is unwise for anyone to put information on facebook that they wouldn't be comfortable seeing on the front page of the newspaper because in effect, anything that you put on there could get on something equivalent to the front page of the newspaper. so if you are unhappy about that, you shouldn't be using facebook, or you should be cautious about what you put there. there's another side about that that you can't control which is all of the stuff that you friends put up about you, and photos of you even though you can take your tag off, you can't take the photo down no matter

what. so, you know, this is where, you know, the argument beginning to be that, you know, facebook no matter what facebook does, the world is really changing. because there's pliability of -- there's plenty of other services that people can put data, flickr, a photo service. somebody can take your photo and put your name on it. you can't take your name off of it on flickr. in that sense, facebook is not doing anything different, but doing it more efficient because it has a more efficient distribution system. >> i have a follow-up comment, i have read articles more recently that have talked about how the younger generation as they develop more experience, exposing their personal lives in some cases the younger generation is trying to educate the older generation and putting more stops in some cases. >> yes, i think the example of my daughter not friending her father is an example of that.

you know, these kids are not crazy. they know what they are doing more than most people give them credit for. you know, kids put controls on their data. in fact, it's recent research study found that in general people under 25 put more controls on their data on facebook than people over 50. for all of the supposed concern of we baby boomers, it maybe that we are just more conversant with the tools and they are more easily able to manipulate the privacy controls. but they do use them. you are right. >> this guy back here. >> to the point of the back of control that an individual might have about what is being said about him or her, let's go to the high school student who committed suicide in south hadley, or "the new york times" story of bullying on facebook done without people's obviously consent. what is mark zuckerberg doing to

try to e mill rate that, to help public school districts to cure that problem or what might be done to facebook by either legislation or litigation to keep that forum from hurting young people? >> well, that's an interesting question. the premise of which i disagree with. another way to ask would be to analogize it to what just happened in pakistan. there was a page on facebook called everybody draw muhammad day. which was created by a group deliberately in order to make fun of muslims who are so sensitive about images of muhammad. it was sensitive. but there was nothing illegal. yet in pakistan, it became known as the facebook page about muhammad. and death threats were issued to mark zuckerberg; right? and the government took action and finally facebook did

shutdown the page in pakistan. you can't see that page in pakistan even though i think you can see it in the rest of the world, and bangladesh you can't see it either. the reason it's analogous, facebook is just a platform for human behavior. you can't -- the world is full of crazy and evil people as well as, i think mostly good people. but, you know, as a platform for human behavior, you are going to see a fair amount of the negatives in addition to, i hope, a lot of the positives. and that isn't facebook's responsibility, per se, in my opinion. on the other hand, it's not to say we ought not to be experiencetive to the issues. this girl who denigrated from ireland hung herself. she was a junior in high school. she was taunting by a lot of the other kids, a lot of taunting did occur on facebook. not all of it, but a lot of it.

it's worth reflecting on how the system could be changed to maybe make that less likely. but it's really more about how society needs to be changed to make people less like that. you know? i don't think you can blame the system exactly for that. but i can guarantee you whether i think that or even if you were to agree with me, the question -- that kind of question is going to be raised more and more. and as facebook gets more and more prominence around the world and gets implicated around more and more complicated dynamics, it's going to get blamed for things. there's a fascinating story, i think i mentioned it in the book on the west bank, jews who lived in settlements were offended that they could not say they lived in israel on facebook. they had to say they lived in palestine. and israel who lived in the east

side had to say they lived in israel. what they decided, in these region, people would say they lived in either of the two. you know, facebook is encounting some real come -- complicated questions. it's still a company of only 1500 employees that doesn't have that much revenue and resources and isn't really capable of properly responding to a vast majority of these kinds of things. you know, if anybody has tried to get customer service on facebook on the phone, good luck. they will do it. eventually you could get somebody on the phone. it will take you a long time. they are improving the system. they are improving even as they are getting 1 million new users a day. it takes a lot of improvement to keep up with the demand, and,

you know, it maybe that facebook will reach a threshold where they almost have a gridlock of issues that they simply can't manage. i don't know what happens then. there are a lot of complicated issues, especially for a company with a 26-year-old in charge. >> do you have a prediction as to when facebook exchanges will become taxed? >> what do you mean exchanges? >> when you post an item on facebook? >> facebook charge you from being on there and using it? [inaudible comment] >> that's an interesting comment. i doubt if that would happen. i guess it's possible. yeah, he's saying what if the government should charge you for using -- facebook might not charge you. i think that's unlikely. who knows. i would predict it's not going to happen. facebook is not interested in charging you to use facebook per se. that's got going to happen.

[inaudible comment] >> right. it costs a lot more to provide the service than it cost somebody to deliver you facebook. facebook, the incremental cost for facebook and each user is infinite. [inaudible comment] >> it isn't. facebook will be taxed in some fashion. i highly doubt that individuals users of facebook would be taxed for using it. you know, anything is possible. you know, we got a lot of crazy people in government. there's no doubt about that. i think, you know, -- the kind of thing people worry about more that actually is happening there's this thing called facebook credit. which have already begun being used quite actively, particularly in games. :

it is great because people are still spending more money on balance is introduced that system even though the split isn't so bad so developers and general are making more money because of it, but it is a form of pact when facebook is taking 30% of every dollar you spend on the system. i predict that will go down so really it is data within that system but they will never charge anyone on facebook but they will find ways, in fact if you want to give your friend

a virtual cupcake on the birthday you pay 1 dollar so you can call that a tax to if -- maybe they should let us use virtual goods for free. anyway, i could go on forever about this. [inaudible] >> attacks they charge me? >> 30% from the book publisher. >> there is a lot of ways we all get tax for doing a lot of things up here. >> what was marked suburb -- zuckerberg's best decision i worst decision? >> oh my god that is a good question. well, i would say that is best decision probably, and when that sort of set a pattern for him that he has abided by to this day was not to get the slightest bit unnerved during the newsfeed

controversy and to become -- to stay confident that this idea of helping people fear more freely and convey information with each other more freely, which was the root of the decision to introduce the new. >> was right, and even though he was getting this incredible protest and people were demonstrating in front of the office and the employees were afraid for their physical safety, it was still something that people were going to end up accepting and considering that is now the most popular thing about facebook, without which we probably wouldn't even want to use it, i think he was right. and that is a very critical story, because it is his recollection of that situation that leads to him in situations like this recent privacy controversy, to be very cautious about how much he can seed to the critics because he has found repeatedly that he was

criticized for things that people ended up liking and all he had to do with a little tweak he always has to make a little tweak. we can't just leave them alone. he has to fix them because he usually does push a little too far but the basic idea of literally every one of these things has remained part of facebook. even beacon, which if you are really an aficionado of facebook you may know there know there was this advertising system introduced in late 2008 called "ma which started showing commercial data to people, to people's friends without people really approving bath, and they shut it down. and they did launch it very badly and it was poorly designed system and it should never have been launched the way it was but in effect, that system now exist that was until recently called facebook connect which have a lot of other capabilities but it has the capabilities of begin in addition to everything else he could do and now even the

light that and is not that different. it is just better designed version of vegan, so nothing that they have done has ever completely -- they just don't surrender these people. and they generally feel very virtuous and having done that. now the worst decision zuckerberg has ever made -- you know, i sometimes wonder, it is really a tough one. you know, the fact he has absolute and total control of facebook is a really interesting thing to examine, and whether that is really a good thing or not. i mean, you know zuckerberg didn't have to have three out of five board feeds to have the moral authority to run that company however you wanted as a way that for example bill gates ran microsoft. he never had literal legal absolute control. and i think it may be a mistake for him to maintain absolute

unquestioned legal control that nobody can overrule him about anything, and you know it wasn't actually his decision to do that. it was actually sean parker's decision and somebody i'm fascinated by and i write a lot about in the book who was briefly marked's top deputy and made tons of important decisions for the company. but i think maybe in going along with that, mark might have made a mistake. on the other hand, if he hadn't, when they offered him $50 million for the company in the fall of 2007, he might've been forced to take it and he might not still be able -- facebook may have not gotten to 500 million because microsoft would wouldn't have owned it -- might have owned it and screwed it up. i don't think most of us would assert that would have been fun. >> maybe you could talk a little bit more about why facebook

is chosen such a strict down -- strips down look and it is often become so popular. to me and a lot of people of my generation i want -- on the back of my cell phone cover and i want clothes clothes that differentiate my style and i want shoes that differentiate my style. want to be unique but see -- facebook decides the same and i'm assuming all of these other countries even though they are vastly different culture. >> they have different language, but what other company did that? google. i mean the two companies that have grown the fastest and have the most impact on the internet where were the two that have the most stripped-down, universalized, simple look and i think that is significant because the reason they did it was they always wanted facebook to be for everybody. they even, when it was just college, he didn't think it

should be just a service for college. he wanted it to be for everybody so in fact they made it simpler as time is gone on. they used to have that stylized al pacino in the corner and they have gotten rid of even that little bit of decorative flourish, and you know it probably is one of the reasons why do you can take off as much in indonesia as in chile and the united states, because it's sort of is a very nonjudgmental, nonlocalized kind of look. it is just like tex, light background and a little bit of blue and black text. >> in follow-on to his question and comment, what they did do with the design change about a year or so ago, there was a lot of user outrage over people don't like change. >> they keep moving around the feeds here in their. >> people didn't like it and they didn't want changes.

i think it was significant enough that it threw people off. >> yeah it did in there was a lot of protest over that. and then it went away. [inaudible] >> people just get really cranky about a. >> but they also get over it. that is the weird thing. if they went back to the old way, we would be annoyed about that. you know, in fact i talked in the book about this group of facebook employees that they created at the time of that particular controversy. i forget what it actually was call. i automatically hate the new facebook homepage and will automatically hate, and will automatically hate the next one and want this one back at that point or something --. >> you have on your iphone is something different than what you have on your ipac.

is different than any other phone. >> people don't like change from the other hand facebook is going to keep changing. that is just the way it is. and probably they will learn to live with it. i'm not saying it is good or bad. i'm just telling you this is the way zuckerberg things. i mean i think the key was this facebook change in the privacy piece of it. keep in mind, the fear of competition is what drives it all, that the internet is the most competitive business landscape that has ever existed by far. there is so much innovation happening, so many places with so many smart people. if facebook were to be static for five minutes it would be overwhelmed by something better. and zuckerberg is terrified of data and therefore, he is trying to survive by being paranoid and he is willing to annoy his users in order to basically keep the

servers that they are going to want to use. >> that raises an interesting question because the larger the following you have, at what point is his ability to innovate constrained by just the sheer number? bsr to happen. >> that is bound to slow him down. >> that is the thing he tells me that he is most worried about is the continued changing facebook at the pace he believes it has to change while bringing this growing mass of users along with him, and you know your hometown company faced the same problem. this is basically what i -- honestly is because it couldn't change to get all the features it needed to have once hundreds of millions of people were using it and they have the disadvantage that in order to change if they had to launch an entire new version and get everybody to download it and do all the stuff which facebook

is an internet service. you can crank and incrementally change it every day. you might not notice they moved the font on this thing up in the corner. were microsoft to change a font in windows they have to give you a new version, at least in the old days, and installed bases are a hugely challenging. it is the cost of success. it is very hard to bring along a base and it often is the kiss of death. and it will be very interesting to see how facebook manages it because it is extremely challenging, and they are going to keep changing. i mean the attitude he basically has is, people want to quit because we are changing, that is the way it has to be. because there are more members we will get by having a better service down the road and maybe they will come back later. somebody else who didn't aslan. >> just an observation. the most fascist people are the

miss level managers of the ministry of finance and planning in indonesia. >> those are friends of yours? >> they are all over it all of the time. >> well, ordinary people in the government then i guess. and that is like i say in iran, it wasn't just the mousavi protesters. was the mullahs and their families and their staff and everything. is a very efficient system for communicating with the people you know and that becomes very evident in every country where it goes. one of the things we didn't talk about is this amazing translation system that they created, where you know facebook went there being only in english to being in 75 languages and about 14 months. and the way they did it was the way wikipedia has created itself. they basically just build -- they restructure the whole platform so that you could take any text on facebook and

translated autonomously from every other text string and then they more or less created a concept in every language that they would want. they decided when to launch a language but then they would fail to users who speak urdu who are on facebook translate all the words on facebook and then vote among yourselves about which text string is the best version in urdu of the english version, so i talk about how spanish was the first one and then sherman german i think and then french and just the word hoax, how to translate the word pope became a very subtle challenge. but it worked and they are still adding new languages all the time. it is available, somebody said in the intro, that 98% of the human race speaks a language that is now functional on facebook, so you know it is really now in the fine-tuning stages from a language point of view. and that was an amazing thing. that is one of the reasons they

have to live in the last year from 250 to 500 million. and why they will probably keep going up, because there is no impediment to using it now matter what language you speak. anybody that didn't already asked a question? she had one and then we will go to you. [inaudible] >> i don't really know. that is not an easy thing to determine. there is an huge, but i will say just anecdotally, i certainly know among my peers, baby boomer college educated, new york baby boomers, that is what i am, a huge number start using facebook and then think it is boring and stop or think it is a waste of time and stopped. i have a theory as to one of the reasons why that is, which is that i think people expect too many friends they don't really know, because they think it

would be rude to decline a friend request at what they don't realize is that by accepting friends who they don't know, they diminish the quality of the facebook experience because they start seeing all this information of people they couldn't care less about. so then if you are going to accept frenchy don't know you have to be very aggressive in adjusting the controls to keep yourself from getting totally bored. but you know, i don't know of any demographic group that is demonstrably leaving facebook. you could find some critics of facebook who would claim they have some reason to think this group or that group, but so far, they haven't really ticked off people in any category enough that there is a real pattern. people do leave. you know, people get fed up of people think it is way too much time. it is amazing to me though how often people tell me they are

leaving facebook and then two months later they say you know what, i think there is some value to it. i'm going to do it just a little bit. which is why facebook doesn't make it that easy to quit. they sort of encourage you to suspend your account rather than to erase your account because they know how many people they raise their accounts and then come back to them later and say, of who i change my mind, could i have my data back? they say no you are raised your account so they make it a little more -- the them make you have to go over some hurdles which a lot of people complain about that they have got a balance. the thing that, one of the many things people don't think about enough about facebook is they have an enormous amount of data about what their members are doing. they know so much more about what is happening in facebook than any outside critic or observer including me who probably probably knows of this much about his anybody who doesn't work there. i don't have a clue what is really going on there.

they know everything. they have total faith on how many new members, how many people are suspending their accounts. is photo usage declining versus six months ago versus yesterday? that allows them to know when they make a change whether it is an effective change because if it starts to increase usage and anyway, they measure that instantly and that is one of the reasons why they don't back off, because if they are making changes that they like the reason they like them is because they can see people are using things differently because of iy intent to making the changes that make people use the service more and that is basically what they are all about. they are about two things, making people use the service more so that they share and are more connected which is their corporate slogan to make the world more connected and open and to serve in the use of their platform partners who are building applications on

facebook. that is there another top priority so all of these recent privacy changes were basically done to give get the application more capability but then i ended up annoying the users so they had to change it a little. spew this guy zuckerberg sounds like a fascinating question so this question is directed more at like getting inside of his brain, but if he is not in it for the money and it seems like a self-evident question, what is he in it for? >> that is a good question. >> what is his mission to impact the world? >> it is a really good question. i was talking to some people today who we were discussing this very question who are very very knowledgeable about facebook and they had independently come to the same conclusion i have, which is that in effect he is a genuine revolutionary. i mean, he really wants to change the world and he has figured out a way that he has

uniquely been able to do that and he is really excited by it and he wants to do it or and he is god a whole sort of roadmap in his mind of further ways he thinks he can do it and probably a good percentage of them are going to work. that to him is much more exciting than getting rich because he is also somebody who is so talented he knows he is never going to have a problem with money personally. he knew that from the time he was 14. he was making tens of thousand dollars in programming jobs when he was in high school and junior high school because he could do it so easily. he could solve good problems for people really fast and get paid a lot. so he use some of that money to start facebook. i really do think that he is concerned about changing the world and he wants to get rich eventually. it is not that he is a total altar is. i think he really thinks yeah it will be great to be rich someday but that will just calm, and it is much more exciting to be

changing the world. what is also quite interesting is that he had a coterie of followers and top-level employees around him who totally think the same way as him. and it is like a kind if you know, religious thing, making the world more open and connected. they are not kidding about it. and yet, they also have 250 ad salespeople who work in facebook who couldn't care less about that. so that is a cultural challenge that they have got all these dead people overhear their report to sheryl sandberg who they hear them say they are changing the world and they are like what? if we could have a few more display ads lobs -- know it is product engineering and that is over here. these people are like on a mission. and they really think of it as a mission. and it is not that -- it is not self-evident. it is not intuitive. most companies aren't like this. is a the very initial company

and what is especially unusual is that it is so big and it is so relatively inexpensive to operate that they can make enough money without even really trying in order to keep it going. and zuckerberg has noticed that over the years and so he figures that will continue to be the case so he doesn't have to worry that much about making money. and he has a very intelligent and capable partner in sheryl sandberg whose job is as. he leaves that to her and he really doesn't think about it. and you know, she built a lot of google ads and she has done a very good job at facebook but he doesn't think about it. and if she wasn't doing as good a job it would only bother him if they couldn't buy the next server they need to build in order to expand into china or whatever they are going to try to do. but they are not in china and he really really really wants to be in china. and he will figure out a way at some point would be my

prediction. do you have another question? one more question? wait, wait, these two people asked their questions. do we have time for two quick ones? go ahead. she asked first. >> what company would you be interested in covering next? >> it is a great question although i do believe it is very possible my next book may be about facebook again because the company is not getting less interesting to me. the country's -- company i've most fascinated by in recent months is chet roulette and that is the company that some people may not know about. it has got a lot of coverage because is a sexual element to it. chad roulette has two video windows that are random live video where you see each other

and a lot of people use it for weird sexual stuff but it is also, also extremely elemental interface. that same kind of blank screen into video windows. that is all it is, and live video connections are a big deal. i think that could be the next form of social networking in some fashion. so i'm closely watching that one. it could be a very good marketing platform. >> you alluded to facebook being similar to google's rise. what is google's reaction? have a approached facebook in any way? >> they wanted to buy it and they wanted to partner with the. they wanted to do the deal with it that microsoft got in 2007 and they said they were willing to possibly by. they did not work aggressively to bite his microsoft did. i think now they're kicking themselves. if they could've bought it for 15 billion or 20 billion in 07 they would be so happy today to have it because facebook is a major major problem for them. think of it this way.

if google's basic business is to search all the world's information which is what they say, facebook is by far the largest single repository of information already on the internet by a company and it is growing faster than anything else and for the most part google can't search it. that is just by definition a huge challenge for google. and there is a lot of other challenges that facebook represents chu not the least of which that is hard and with microsoft which is the one company that might actually give google they run for its money. microsoft would love to take out a way to make their partnership with facebook work for them better than it has. but google would still love to buy facebook. if google could buy facebook for 30 billion today at that they would do it that they no zuckerberg would not want to sell. well, thank you all.

[applause] and i'm happy to sign any books you want to buy.

a discussion on the people behind medical mysteries with molly crosby author of "asleep" and rebecca skloot the author of "the immortal life of henrietta lacks." from 2010 texas book festival in austin texas this is about an hour. i

>> humanizing medical mysteries and the others are molly caldwell crosby and rebecca skloot. i want to remind you that following 15 minutes after the office -- authors will sign their books on congress avenue between tenth and 11th street. i've been involved with book fairs for many years, and like 10 years ago i was taking -- and i mentioned i was a scientist and the author was a history writer. he turned to me and he said whoy are your favorite science writers? i was struck dumbfounded and i'm said, neal wilson, carl sagan. nothing came to me because the truth was i really wasn't gripped by science writing atn' that time. w but since then, writers like molly and rebecca have not onlyn got my attention but the attention of the world.no this is in large part because they are so skilled at ringing extremely difficult and complex subjects tose light.

i know that if i were back inec that car today i would have the name molly caldwell and rebecca skloot roping off of my time. it is in the honor to introduceo them to you. mali holds a masters and arts degree in nonfiction and science writing from johns hopkins university. she spent several years workingv for "national geographic" and her writings have appeared inpe "newsweek", health and "usa today" among others. mali served as a professor in creative nonfiction at the university of memphis the university of memphis. and forgotten epidemics remain one of medicine's greatest mysteries. second book--her first is american plagues, the untold story of yellow favor, the epidemic that shaped our history. rebecca is a science writer who has written over 200 articles

that have been in the new york times, discover and many others. she spent eight years on the board of directors of the national book critics her circles. she has a bs in biological science and creative nonfiction. henry and that is her first book and has become a new york times best-seller. i wanted to kind of get started with what resonated with me so much, science writing is so gripping now. in large part that is because writers like you use narratives to pull the reader in. i wonder if you could talk about a roll of narrative as a means for communicating science. >> can everybody hear in the back? thank you. wonderful. i have had the same reaction.

i'm constantly being asked to my favorite science writers are and i have a few answers i give. narrative science writing is pretty rare. i have to say how cool it is that you have to treat the women talking about it. [applause] the one thing that is more rare than narrative science writing is women narrative science writing. it is great we are here to talk about this. i think in some ways it is everything in the kind of writing that we do. science is something that affects everybody's life. is so important for the general public to understand science and to see the way science interact with daily life and it is important for scientists to learn the stories of the people behind the science that they are doing and to think of science in a narrative way. a lot of people don't. what you get in science writing is the facts and those facts are

often intimidating to the general public. one thing i hear over and over again from people when you hear about my book is, tactically it is the story of the first human cells are grown in culture and when you say that to people they go you wrote a book about cells? but it is not. it is a story about a family and what happens -- about ethics in science and the use of people in research without their consent. it is about class and race and so many things and science is that. science does not exist in a vacuum and i hear over and over again from readers to send me e-mails saying i hit science. last time i took a science class was in middle school and avoided the rest of my educational career. i almost didn't read your book because there were cells on the cover but then i did and i couldn't put it down and i got to the end and realize

accidentally learned a lot about cells. i don't exactly remember when i'd did it. that is the highest compliment i could get. it is like giving the medicine when it tastes really good. i think is really important to use these stories to put the science in and telling human stories about science and let them learn about science and a way that isn't here is the science part you are learning now. take out your highlighters and get the text books so narrative let you do that. it lets people go through science because they want to see what happens next. >> i agree. i am proud to be one of the women sitting on the panel today. i had very little interest in science at school. i was not drawn to it because it is so impersonal. my first real interest was in college. i went to a liberal arts school and english riding major. i was forced to take a science

course and so i took the chemistry of aids. it was the first time i had seen -- learned science applied to a particular disease. to a virus. from that point on i was hooked. i loved it. i do think science can be intimidating. is very impersonal and a lot of ways so as a science writer your dog is to make the impersonal personal. illness is one of the universal things we all have in common. it connects us all and transcends time periods. my books take place in different time periods. whether 1870s or 1920s. we can still understand and relate with epidemics. also a future lesson as well. the role of narrative in science as you said, it is absolutely important to get the story across and i like the point you

made that it is important that the doctors and researchers understand the personal stories of the patients because especially with my second book, that is about being a really important element of the book. this was an epidemic that spans 20 research the years with long-term effects and the doctors develop long-term relationships with the patients. they exchanged letters and christmas cards and visited one another and vacation homes. that was interesting for me because i don't think we have relationships like that today. that was part of bringing the impersonal story to life. >> we blurred the lines between science writing and medical writing. i wonder if we want to address that a little bit. what do you see as the goals and responsibilities of medical riding compared to science writing or in general? >> responsibility is getting the information correct.

the fact. i always try to have experts whether it be microbiology or epidemiology read parts of the book or the old look and make sure i am translating it correctly. i try to take the scientific information and make it more readable and bridge that gap. i want to make sure it is done correctly. >> accuracy and the writing is important but in science writing is so easy to make a little tiny mistake and state something as definitive instead of possibly definitive. there are a lot of subtleties. for me, i thought a lot about my responsibility and my role as a writer. a lot of what i read about our places where every day life in science intersects. often that can get messy sometimes so i write about this story, my book is so much about

cells taken from this woman without her knowledge in the 50s and went on to become one of the most important things that happened to madison. she never knew about it and died very young and her family lived in poverty. to this day they can't afford to go to the doctor because they don't have enough money yet their mother's cells contributed to all medicine out there. there is not a person here who didn't benefit medically in some way from these cells. the scientists were white and the -- there are a lot of loaded issues in this book. i come at science writing as a scientist. i became a writer later. for me one of the big responsibilities is asking tough questions. one of the things that is true about science writing is it is cheerleading. there are not a lot of journalists who has a lot of tough questions. a lot of headlines are about this science advance and that is not usually in a much later that

people start asking questions about things that happened long ago. is important to ask the questions about ethics and how science is impacting people's lives and also not demonize science. this was important to me, the people behind the science showing human beings behind scientists and sometimes very well intentioned scientists accidentally have negative affect on people. it was important to present these issues but not scare people away from the science. in my case so much of the story is about african-americans who have a history of being afraid to go to the doctor because there is a long history of research. i don't want to make that problem worse. you have to think about the responsibility in any science. science scares people whether you talk about nanotechnology, little molecule you can see being created a use for things, we don't know what is going on

with them. we are cloning. it is easy to sensationalize scientists and scare people. i think a lot about that when i write. how to well-balanced these things? i am asking tough questions but making it clear the science is good and i don't want to scare people from going to the doctor. that is a big personal responsibility. people often say i went to the doctor. i'm supposed to go next week. should i be worried? we spend a lot of time talking about no, you should not be worried. you should go to the doctor. read the forms they said you. i spent a lot of time translating that for people. >> the deck about demonizing is a great one. that is something i had to deal with, human experimentation. you look at that and think how can you experiment on humans

with or without their consent? as a writer my responsibility is to recreate what was like in those epidemics that would make people so desperate when you are losing tens of your population. doctors would in fact that patients, knowingly or unknowingly. looking at it from a different perspective in history. there's a lot of responsibility there cannot demonize. >> context is everything. putting people in the mindset of this is what it was like in the 1910s 1850s and why people were doing what they were doing and here's how it was different from today. when people pick up a book and start reading about some research that was done on people without consent they are reading it from today's perspective that you can get in trouble when you look at the far past or even the near past for the eyes of what we know today. context is important. >> one thing we all share is

ellis and that is another thing. but another thing, collateral damage is the effect on our families. both of you write about those affecting your books and not wonder if you can talk about it? collateral damage to families. >> my second book deals with the sleeping sickness epidemic from the 1920s. it was a very personal story for me. it is known as the forgotten epidemic. i could not find one book on the subject when i began researching it. my grandmother had been a survivor. she was living in dallas, texas. she came down with a case of sleeping sickness and slept for 180 days. she was never able to finish school. she had a slow recovery. she had a relatively normal life, but i knew all my childhood something was not

quite right. any time asked the family about it she said she had been that way since the sleeping epidemic. that made me want to cover this and even more so when i realized nothing had been written on this and surprisingly as much as it has been forgotten, when i talk in my interviews i am often contacted by people who say my great-grandmother had that or my great grandparents. we always wondered there are a lot of elements involved in this disease. people wary that it was genetic and now they know that it is related to this or the epidemic percolating at the time. it was sternly a personal story for me that inspired me to write it. >> that is one of the things. science is personal for everybody. affect everyone's live. that is something you don't think about. it is personal for the

scientists. and this is how it is personal for you. it is interesting, my book is about many things. it is about the effect that losing a mother, on the family. they dealt with so many things. and five kids, the youngest kid, the oldest was 16. and read the story and connect on that level. people almost lost a parent, the

most emotional e-mails, my mother or father or great-grandmother or someone important my life got cancer when i was young or recently and they are still here. a didn't go through that. they were used to develop a drug. that is an incredible personal connection. a lot of what brings us to our stories is some sort of personal connection. i learned about these cells when i was 16 in a basic biology class. the story that is in the book my teacher said what most biology teachers say which is there are these incredible cells that have been around since 1951 even though the woman they came from god. she never knew they were taken but they became incredibly

important. i became completely obsessed with these cells. it took me however long it is, a decade to write this book. a lot of the reason i latched onto the story, my father was very sick and he had gotten a viral infection that caused severe brain damage. he went from being my marathon running dad to being this guy who couldn't get off the couch. he had lost a lot of his money. he couldn't drive. one of my jobs as a teenager was drive dad to the hospital for a drug infusion and sit while he got treated. i was in a big room with lots of other patients who were being treated. i did my homework there and hung out in this room. a lot of fear comes with that. they didn't know if it was going

to help or hurt. we really hoped this would help fix him and bring him back and there was a lot of disappointment that it didn't help. i was wrestling with a range of the motion that come with research subjects or family member of a research subject when i heard about these cells which is why my first question was what did they think of it? going to something that felt similar to what her family -- what i imagine her family went through. john mcphee, incredible narrative, he has written a zillion books. they have a very personal connection and that is true for all science writers. i often tell students if they go back to earlier and think what

you have been obsess with your whole life related to science and where are the stories? >> you talked about this a little bit but there are mysteries surrounding both of your topics. nobody knows why and rihanna cells grow the way they do and no one knows what caused encephalitis of the delmack encephalitis to this day, how frustrating is it to write a book review can't give the answers? >> it literally means selling your brain that makes use leave the. what caused that remains a mystery. one of the physicians i interviewed in writing this was a pediatric neurologist. he has seen 25 cases among kids. it is a horrible experience for

children. it is a disease of the brain that alters their mind. some of these kids become extremely obsessive compulsive. some become violently ill. many are institutionalized. also for the physicians, they are still working on it today. they can't answer why this occurred. it is not a contagious disease. like the 1918 flow, what about the cases today? will we see this come back. this is connected to the flu. are we likely to see another sleeping sickness epidemic? some physicians are doing research to make that connection between the flu and sleeping sickness. i go on line. doctors are trying to connect

sleeping sickness with stress. they overreact to infection and sleeping sickness results. for me is interesting to keep watching. i didn't know how it was going to an end. i came to see if it was going in. >> that is one of those things about nonfiction. i could have kept researching this story forever. the family is still alive and doing things. at some point you have to say the story is over and we will see about a follow-up. there are so many things you can't answer and in a lot of ways and rihanna herself who died in 1951 didn't read or write so there were no letters, i had to recreate a person from other people's memories and little documentation and that

was one of the most challenging and frustrating experiences of answering the question of who she was. there's also the mystery that no one can explain why her cells grew and no other cells had. that is just the fact. i often talk in front of groups of scientists and that will come up and we say why don't we know that? we know everything else. there is now a group of scientists trying to get me a better answer to that question but it is not so frustrating to me. it is frustrating for readers sometimes. i get people to say one thing i didn't get from your book that you didn't explain clearly was y. the cells grow. that is because no one knows. i said no one knows but that part of a book, people wanted me to have figured out by the end. no one knows. the other big thing is there are a lot of unanswered questions.

one of my goals was to not advocate for one position or one stance on this very large issue of who should be using biological material or profiting off of them, should you be told your tissues are used in research? most people in the united states, how do we deal with getting consent for research without inhibiting science? we end with a lot of big questions. i often get people who stand up at my events and say what do we do? how do we fix it? scientists say what should our consent forms say? this is not my job actually. i feel my job as a journalist is to put this out there and say this is why this story is important and hear the issues that are real and present today. so starting a conversation is important. to meet the lack of answers is part of the story. if there were answers that would

mean all the issues had been solved and they haven't been. there's a tendency to want to tie that up and meet these ends and make it seem there is a nice end. >> you write in such narrative form we get a little diluted to thinking it is a story. it is reality. i want to talk about the structure of your books a little bit. one of the things you both have talked about that you covered so many things. there is ethical, historical, medical, personal stories. how did you come up the structured to wrap those things up? those many difficult topics? >> pounding by head against the wall for year. there are three separate narratives that are rated together. you jump around in time and between these stories and some were toward the end they all come together in one story.

it took me so long to come up with the structure of the book, what took be the longest in writing the book, i knew that if i told the story chronologically one of the things their writers have to do, it is one of the things that make narrative. i hard on my students about structural time. anyone who has been in class with me, structure structure structure. it is the thing that makes or breaks the narrative. a new if i started the story and told the chronologically, she was born in 19 -- why should we care? we would be going along and two thirds of the way for her family would take over and be the main characters and i was here and it wouldn't really work. all so that structure and chronology allows you to empathize certain things about the story. i felt like it was really important to learn the story of what happened to her family. at the same time you were learning the story of amazing

things that happen with these cells. so you sort of flip-flop back and forth. in one chapter, this is so great and the next half, this happened to the family and that amazing science created hard effect. the weight of the story is heavier when you know what happened to the family. so figuring out how to do that was a lot of index cards on big walls and moving around and i would stare at them for hours and move one card and said back down. for me, there aren't a lot of -- there are some models that you can read to look at this, but i read a lot of fiction. i collected -- went to the local bookseller, independent bookseller, little tiny store in west virginia where i would go to right and told her what i was trying to do and said will you find me any novel you can find set in multiple time periods,

greatest chronology and have lots of characters? she would find these books and i read them all and i would take little fingers from each book. fried green tomatoes was a very useful to me. and movies. lot of movies are structured like that. we don't think about it but so many movies jump around in time and do that sort of thing. i started watching any movie i could find that was structured in the same way. i was watching hurricane about resler hurricane carter. it is very annoying to everyone because i kept saying that is my book. i actually storyboarded it and map of the structure of the movie by playing and pausing. to look at how they did that. one thing i got was it is jerry fast. part of what wasn't working about my structure was it had the long chapters and another long chapter and i realize they

have to jump around quickly to keep people moving or you lose them. narrative has a lot to learn from these other areas. >> i find that to be one of the creative aspects of science writing. you have to apply a lot of creativity to make it interesting and readable. so structure will make or break a story like that. when i was writing my first book the american play about yellow fever i was sitting down to tackle a 100 year time frame with an ensemble cast and make a character who is an insect. trying to make that readable and personal was a challenge. i would write things out and focus on the people. with my second book it was completely different problem. this is a huge spectrum of a disease with everything from

people with mild symptoms who recovered to those who became violently in sane and institutionalized. how do you find one character or two that can represent that spectrum? so i divided the book into case studies. their eight case studies book ended by my grandmother's story and each case study deals with the part of the book where you going to the person, try to recreate your life as you photograph whatever you can and recreate what that patient experienced and woven throughout the case study, those same doctors who are treating these patientss and working with them. that was organizing a lot of very different material. and a creative enough atmosphere would make people read it. >> that is something those riders underestimate.

i never tackled a large project like this. by the time i got to the point that it was time to matching the been riding of, i had this mound of material and eventually had to stop the process and go back and catalog everything i had and start over again with my research material so make it so you could find the things you wanted to organize. one things, what suggestions do you have riders just starting out? organize everything, label, and come up with color coding system is because when you sit down to put that structure into place not only are you trying to organize on page but with raw material all over your office. >> i will ask you each the one question i have been dying to ask. your case studies are so fascinating but maybe things is not the one that most people got but jumped at me, the story of bruce.

i will read a couple lines from the book. the doctor on this case was frederick killme. he quietly pulls the girl here and says there's nothing else to be done. he reported every test. there were simply no answers. this followed from reach deeper and deeper into her own world like a wave disappearing due in beneath the surface of water. he apologized and told the parents she would never recover. when he looked at the sleeping girl, this girl is frozen, can't move but still hears the doctor say she is never going to recover. i was so struck. this was the case -- was there when you found the most moving? does one come back more than any other? >> that was one of the most

moving. one of the first cases in new york in 1980 and they are realizing this is spreading around the world rapidly. up until that point they did not realize these sleeping patients were trapped in their bodies and aware of everything happening around them. this is one of the first cases. he had no idea she could hear anything so when he turned around and saw the tears it is such a humanizing moment. and humbling for the doctor. at that point they realized this much work for the patients than they ever imagined and the family members. hers was one of the most touching cases from the book. a girl who went insane enough that her own teeth and eyes, that is what most people bring up and have questions about. the only thing that made that

tolerable was the doctor said the pain mechanism in her brain had been damaged. she felt no pain. the compulsive behavior that drew her to do this, in that case that was the only thing that i could get my mind around was writing about her, that i could sit down, it is like something you couldn't even imagine. that gets the most attention. but for me, the most humanizing moment in that was probably my favorite. >> this is one of those things that is difficult about narrative writing, when you have a story really emotional or really painful. you live it when you are recreating it on the page. this is true for ficonrite .. death, never

experienced anything more traumatizing than writing that because i had to live that moment over and over again to really get into her head and body and imagine what it felt like and talked to another writer who wrote about difficult stuff. a lot of writers talk about it. the impact that has, the need to embody your material when your material is traumatizing. war reporters deal with this all the time. they get a post-traumatic stress disorder after reliving the experience they wrote about. there is something cathartic about having it on the page and moving on. the other difficult things that i would have to go laydown to recover. >> your characters in the book becomes so real. they are real people you completely visualize and imagine. when we brought up the responsibility of writing that is a huge responsibility. writing about real people.

you want to represent them, to know that if they came back today and read this they would say this is similar to what was happening. that is a daunting prospect. >> especially when they are still alive. they sent a box of 30 manuscripts to any scientist still alive before it went to press. that was a very long week. the scene from your book i want to talk to you about takes place a few days after her daughter debra sees her mother's sells for the first time with christopher -- sorry. and researcher at johns hopkins. when he projected herself on the monitor a few days later debra said they are beautiful. she was right. beautiful and other worldly. growing green and moving like water. small and is the real.

looking like heavenly bodies might look. they could even flits through the air. i remember reading that. no way did she do this. you made something scientific slightly spiritual. i feel like that is a big risk. did you realize it was a risk and were you nervous about including that? >> context of where that happens is the day before deborah stout saw her mother's cells was a very incredible experience for her and various other things happened that were traumatizing and she was spiraling into a dangerous place. i was talking to her cousin who is a pastor and he was holding the bottle in front of me and explaining to me why the family believed she was chosen as an angel and brought to life in these cells and as a scientist coming they this sells ourselves with a nucleus and rebozos and

sells structures. is she'll live in these cells? for her family she very much is and continues to be and her soul is in there. this is part of the theme, reading sections of the bible to me things like if the lord will grant immortal life to his believers and you never know what form people will come back in when they are chosen. she was brought back to do good in the world. this was on moment where it was very clear to me that it was much easier and clearer to think of these cells in spiritual terms than scientific terms particularly for the family. when you put biblical explanations next to the scientific explanation it is no contest. was much clearer and easier to relate to. i came to the point where the scientist in me was able to open up and understand where that

came from. i was jealous. people often ask did they convert you? the answer is no. i came into this without any religious background and not a person who practices religion but i got a completely different and more nuanced understanding of the role faith plays in people's lives and how important and healthy it can be. that is not something i often think about. i also saw the ways people talk about science versus religion and to be a lot of the book is about moments that science and religion can actually work together and lead to deeper understanding of things. hy thought was important to include it. i was never nervous about that but scientists often stand up and ask questions like did you ever strain out the family on her spirit is in there thing or do they still think she is in there? my answer is can you prove she is not? that is part of the story, that

whether you or anybody is alive in their cells depends on how you define life, how you define spirit and soul and what your dna means to you, your dna is in there. it is a sort of existential question that nobody can answer. you can save her family is wrong. a lot of scientists have said it is helpful to read that and held them connect to patients they always felt were far away from them in terms of understanding science. >> given that back and forth between science and religion that was fascinating. that neurologist you mentioned in the 1920s wrote the definitive book on evolution, one of the greatest -- since darwin. he called the brain the mechanism of salvation. to me it was fascinating to sees that at that time period, he much more had to gather this idea of science through

spirituality. >> this is a question everyone wants to know. how do you right? what is your writing style? >> i have always been drawn to creative writing. [talking over each other] >> definitely on the laptop. i find internet to be a huge source of information and research that makes my job embodies year. i have two small kids. i don't have the ability to do research for weeks at a time. that has been a great thing for me. people ask how do you not get writer's block? i don't have time for writer's block. i have four hours of quiet to sit down and write. i don't slow down at all but are also had a professor in college who gave me one of the greatest pieces of advice. there is no such thing as writers balk, just a lack of

research. i spend half my time going back and forth to the library. that gives the story its texture. >> i was going to say the same thing about writer's block. it doesn't exist. you just don't have enough material yet. you don't know your story. my writing process has a lot of writers, i struggled for a long time with figuring out went to right. i find the internet useful and incredibly distracting. i tend to -- i can sit down and write until i have my material to work with so i do my research. i take a lot of notes and i do brain dumps after i research a few things i am writing about supply get in on paper but i don't sit down with my writing until late in the game after the research is done and i have digested it. at that point have to unplug. i spent a lot of time in coffee

shops. when i go somewhere to write you feel like an idiot if you have gone there to write and you don't write. i would struggle. i had a teacher in grand school who would always say 8 to be a writer you have to write every day. wake up at 5:00 in the morning and right for four five hours and you really bother me when you say that. that is not my style. than he actually is a good friend and came to visit me and said -- what about 5:00 in the morning and i heard a rustling around and i will try this 5:00 in the morning thing. i wrote more than morning and i have written -- i hate you for this. i started waking up at 5:00 in the morning every day, rolling out of bed into my car and going to a nearby coffee shop where i would write and to like goodness it anymore and then do as long as i could. usually about 5:00 until 10:00 or 11:00 and that creative jews

is gone and then the e-mail and online thing that whenever other work i have to do but i only do that when i'm writing mode. am not a morning person. i go back and forth. i have to have it be at a time when nothing else is going on but also a great merit of nonfiction writer once said she does the same thing and a lot of it is because it tricked her brain. she is not really awake yet. she starts writing it eventually wakes up and she is writing. i might as well keep going. i definitely -- there is something to that. my brain has not kick in that early in the morning and it is easier to be creative. >> i would like to open it up to the audience for questions. there is a microphone. if you wouldn't mind coming. thank you.

>> it might not be on. is that on? in the back. there you go. we will repeat your question. [inaudible]

>> can i stop you? we are going to run all of time. his question was the book was framed as it was a mortal sin that scientists didn't get consent and the family didn't get money and actually it is not. my -- consent didn't exist. it was standard practice. i make it clear in the book that was standard practice. [inaudible] >> question is, is this a really -- seems to meet the same structure that keeps you from getting health care has no problem getting consent, the price of everything goes up a little bit and it turns into the story turns into a question of monetizing everything. if i am an organ donor should i

insist i be paid for my organs? >> this offer comes up. a lot of their story, people made money off of these cells. where is our cut? these cells led to so much important medicine, why can't we go to the doctor? the question of what you monetize and who should profit off of biological materials is a big one and the discussion we are having as a culture is not just a question of should patients profit but should researchers profit and who is profiting and how do you deal with that and tell people people are profiting. there are a lot of big questions and it is the commercial of science in a bidding war moving science forward and i honestly think a lot of it in terms of other people who are very concerned about this. a lot comes down to the debate about health care. the lack of ability to go to the doctor has nothing to do with those cells.

it highlights this irony that sometimes people behind the -- can't get access to care. that is part of this discussion. should you commercialize science? the idea has always been everyone benefits from science, we owe it to do things like that. not everyone benefits. off in these samples are turned into products that go back to people that not everyone can afford. science is depending on people, should not everyone have access to that? that is part of the health-care debate. the story is about so much more than money. it is about privacy and the fact that people want to stay with their bodies. money is the center focus

because it is so -- >> if any of your books by going to be made into films. >> are any of us going to be made into films and the answer is yes. it is being made into an hbo money being produced by oprah. we are in the process of doing that right now. >> i agree narrative science writing makes it come alive. it is a great way to do it but i often wondered how you deal with the accuracy of the dialogue? you weren't there, there were no reporters running. how do you deal with it? >> those are lines that get blurred allotted narrative nonfiction writing. where do you draw the line? i am a purist about it. if it is in quotes it came directly from them, usually in that same dialect.

i don't ever paraphrase for them. i take it as it is. it comes from their personal material like diaries and letters. >> this is pretty frustrating for narrative nonfiction writers because people read narrative material and assume you were not there, you had to have made some of the up. you can reconstruct it accurately. this is why it took ten years to write the book. every narrative detail is verifiable right down to it was raining, the room looked like this. those things are very easy to recreate. dialogue is more challenging. there is stuff that appears on paper and in my case medical records, journals and things like that were important. the opening scene of the book where she gets out of her car and walks up to the front counter of a hospital and says i have a knock on why will in, term medical record says patients says found tumor on

cervix. she did not walk up to the desk and say i have found a tumor on my cervix because that was not who she was. i interviewed all of her living relative is, everyone from that time and have them tell me the stories of what happened and the way they told the story is she said i got a knock on my womb. the quotes recreated from interviews are direct quotes from the way they were reconstructed from people who heard them and i talked to her doctors and people and i verified them with as many people as i could. various narrative moments in the story fact that i wasn't there for all had multiple sources. i would not say to them did she walk up to the desk and say i have a knock on my will but tell me what happened and they would come back with the same story and when you hear the same story from five or six people that is as close to accurate as you're going to get when there is no written documentation. i had fact checkers to verify all the information. these were recorded by other

people. every detail in a story is like that. if it reads like fiction some of it might be made up. that is unfortunate. >> my question is mostly for molly but i teach economics which is another discipline that struggle with education. i wonder what insights or advice you have for the educational process in science and you need changes in high school or college teaching? >> couple people who read my book recently said it is a shame more kids aren't reading books like this in their science classes because especially for kids, high-school or college age, the human stories, the connections are what they take away from it. they connect to those people and i say i don't write about disease. i wrote about people who have disease. as far as education goes, kids

would learn a lot better if they were given that kind of context that they can put those facts in. >> my book has been really widely -- is being documented in colleges and a lot of universities where all freshmen are required to read the book. in medical schools kids are required to read the book. i spent a lot of time talking at universities and high schools. that is exactly what the take home point for all these kids really is. this is the first science book -- i had a kid come to me last week and said this is the first book i have ever finished in my life. i hate science and the story really got me to go through it. in my case the book is actually a lot of it is about the importance of education. her family had no access to education and a lot of trauma that happened to them happened because they didn't understand what was going on and no one tried to explain it to them. there's a lot of access to

education for the poor and minorities. have seen kids excited about the book and asking important questions and i realized the the future scientist. they need to get these stories and their siblings often come to my events. i want to read your book but high and 10. so i ami and 10. so i amm 10. so i am writing it for them. >> a woman called from a cathedral and said i came in and one of the medical students asked what i was doing there and we heard the story of yellow fever and doctors gave their lives in the course of medicine and want to come to the place where that happened. one of the most rewarding

experiences. the way they practice medicine. [talking over each other] >> i am so sorry. we have two minutes left. i am very sorry. i wonder if you could both in one minutes a what is next for you. >> i signed on for my third book. it will have an element of science writing with scotland yard, forensic work and scotland yard detective tracking down a group of thing that took place in edwardian london. a lot of early detection and forensic psychological play. >> for me, the story is like the film, they have taken over everything. i am working on a young adult version and a consultant on the film so i will be working on that and so is the family. we will be part of that. i have other ideas i will begin to work on but i am still

focusing on this talking at different universities pretty much every day. >> i can't tell you how much fun this has been for me. and three women talking about science, a wonderful morning and wonderful way to kick off the texas book festival. i hope you will join us in 15 minutes in the book signing tend. thank you. [applause]

>> coming up next, booktv presents afterwards, an hour-long program where we invite guest host to interview authors. this week, former massachusetts governor and republican presidential candidate, mitty romney discusses his new book, "no apology: the case for amerian greatness" in it he examines what he believes that

the greatest challenges of the nation today provides his own blueprint for american progress in the years to come. the expected 2012 candidate talks with juan williams of national public radio. >> i'm ron williams. today i'm not worried, mitty romney's new book is called subfloor mitty romney, everybody assumes this book is the kickoff to your 2012 presidential campaign. are they right? >> guest: it's too early to tell. frankly the book has come from my experience over the years working in the other and seen some of those companies are making a lot of progress. other nations are catching up. and my concern is if we don't recognize the source of our greatness and take action to shore up the fundamentals of

america's fatality, that we could find ourselves in eclipsed by the nation. so this is the books in america, let's wake up and do what we always do, graced the occasion. let's rebuild our strength and provide for cases. postcode now, part of this seems to be especially in the early parts of the book a critique of president obama. it's got the it has been candling -- candling for people who hate america and wish america the worst. is that right? >> guest: i think he made an enormous error that hurt his credibility and our national interest by carrying out a few of the first month of his presidency a form of apology to her, a series of statements saying america and derisive, that america is eric and, that

we don't listen to the concerns of others, that america has the data to other donations. i don't think that's historically accurate. i think america has freed other nations from peters. we have not been to getting to other nations. that being said, i think it's created the impression that our conviction and principles is wavering and it's not. does us a mistake on the president's part in a foreign policy with the values and prescriptive to script by harry truman and dean ashton all in the second world war is the more appropriate course of america's way forward. >> host: i think in the book it was for the u.s. to be strong. but then in talking about some of the things that president obama has done an especially in the foreign-policy companies seem to suggest he is just finishing america. the democratic national committee, by the way, issued a statement that said america in the last election rejected

foreign policy and wholeheartedly adopted by mitt romney in this poly would alienate allies and embolden enemies. what do you think? >> guest: i don't have a lot to say about the dfc, what kind of street they're going to put out. but the areas where you think the president disappoints a lot of folks, including myself, was with the hundred supreme court, said that they are anti-american pro-chavez president had violated the constitution and their military removed him from office. our president said put him back, which it thinks think surprised folks and i think that was an inappropriate action. when colombia seeks a special status with the united states on a tree bases, columbia standing up to hugo chavez. we deny him a special status. but i think it's a mistake. when he goes before the united nations and speaks for the first time in chastises israel in front of the united nations, but has nothing to say about the palestinian group hamas

launching 7000 rockets and israel. but i think a mistake. and of course the decision to withdraw our support for missile defense to poland and the czech republic led those great friends to be very concerned about america's willingness to stand with them. at the same time, perhaps designed to reset relations with russia as the president indicated. i'm afraid the steps they took have confused our friend, made our shows, if you will, continue having on in a course that's not helpful to the world. you have both iran pursuing at nuclear folly. was korea of course did nuclear test. even if the president was speaking carried out various tests. this is in my opinion an indication that they felt the president was not going to be a strong defender of american values and american principles.

human rights, democracy, free trade, free enterprise. those words of apology and the statements have emboldened those who find us as a weakened enemy. >> host: in the book you make the argument that it's important to keep america strong and keep america's leading presence in terms of world to fear. a specific time and dealing with iran, for example, and the rising nuclear ambition. you think it's important to say right now before anything happens that if they were to take any action, that america would devastate. there is the response would be nuclear and devastating. >> host: to some degree we have made that statement to the world, but i think it's important that the world understands that if nations are going to seek nuclear status as a man is obviously doing, if they seek that status and the team fissile material, but if that's fissile material finds

its hands -- or it's way into the hands of people who use it somewhere, that i respond will match a speech at a terrorist organization it, potentially as well to the nation that provided it. and as a result, i think the people of iran might ask themselves, do we really want to fissile material in our country? do we want to have the risk of being called into the circle of suspects in the event of a nuclear event in the world sometime over the next couple of decades? people should recognize becoming nuclear has an enormous peril and that means you material might get out, might be used in other states may respond against that nation as it went against who ever used a nuclear device. >> host: so you think the ayatollahs would be fearful then? >> guest: i think the people of iran were growing recognition that becoming a nuclear nation is not solely a matter of pride, but becoming a nuclear nation

has to do with an enormous downside, that there's a risk risk to be nuclear, that if somehow your regime does not carefully managed the fissile material and it becomes used in the world coming might be the subject of some kind of retaliation. i think the people of iran need to understand very clearly the downsides of becoming a nuclear nation. i also wish that this president and prior presidents have been successful in persuading iran from its folly right back in and enacting very tough sanctions against iran. iranian citizens, business people and political leaders ought to know when you violate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the consequences are going to be severe. they have to know the military options are on the table. while those on the table, those actively employed will be very crippling sanctions. we simply have not been successful in putting in place those kinds of actions. >> host: you say in the book that america remains a leading

military power in the world. the same time can you say there's a need for increased spending on defense and you are in the book this administration have not put money into defense spending. you tell her funniest story if you break it down and include money spent by the chinese malay, chinese are out spending and to diminish our leading terms of military might. >> guest: of course you can understand the sentiment of military nations to get stronger. you're not going to try to persuade the chinese from saying that both the military come up with to make an assessment of the threats that exist in the world and of the missions that our military might be called upon to carry out. our military has a far broader array of responsibilities and missions that nation like china or russia or other nations in

the world. and to protect ourselves, to respond to humanitarian crises, to have a nuclear deterrent against the nuclear threat, the list goes on and on and on with the various challenges the military has. in my view, requires an annual budget of roughly 4% of gdp. right now worth 3.8% of gdp. total federal spending over time is spent 20% of the gdp. so we're saying the defense budget ought to be 20% of the total gdp. a lot of percentages they are. hi something is to say --c were spending so much more than any other nation in the world. why should we be spending any more in military? they spend far less than we do. but as you go behind their numbers then you find they don't report all the military spending and their cost, for instance where they have conscription, their costs are much, much

lower. it's a much more comparable basis. 10%, but something closer to have the level of the united states by paying but that same cost if you will. in russia likewise is spending a good deal more than the reporter. what that suggests is you really can't continue to pare down our military might, that we must keep it intact are going to be confident that we and our friends and our interests are able to be protected around the world. >> host: you outlined in the book and again the title of the book is "no apology: the case for amerian greatness." you outlined in the book for competing powers. russia, china, iran and the terrorists, and she hobbyists. and the terrorists, and she hobbyists. is on its energy economy, becoming richer and more powerful.

china becoming more of and then of course you >> guest: yeah, i think following the collapse the success of we had a glorious we figured they'd lost in the world was going to is that this is america's wish awaits them in the past. but the have great ambitions of becoming world superpowers if not the stage. you mentioned the first russia. without russia had are so extraordinarily rich, that variable to use that wealth to

that they for their coal sold more energy lashes in saudi arabia. but they are in the military that a long way from there, but that's at their they are supportive of iran because it gives them more control of, i think russia looks at their strategy and their attempt at least many players on the world stage. they reassertion of that going to other places and they can control of the pipelines through likewise have relations with

iran and if iran were to become a superpower he might have more influence of the energy of the middle east and real efforts to get close to venezuela. again, venezuela situation. it contemplates the old-fashioned way, which is they've adopted in some respects free enterprise. not guidelines and strictures of a free enterprise and they are winning in a lot of wealthy are creating this allowed them to ramp up the military in the german submarines to he can go

up against going to be a course the jihad is don't and product resources and military might come up to date decay >> host: well, when you stop now of china wait a second, the united states masterminded the goal is but to be strong, but that is the bottom line use of what you call soft power. soft terms of spelling america to poor countries, to areas where i, where people are

impoverished and young that are becoming cheap how does soft power trigger into soft power tool enhancing the american western come speak softly and an important part of national power. the soft power, meaning the thinking of others to adopt principles promote human rights is also critical think we vastly underused an, health care technology the things we can provide in such way that nations would think more kindly of us

can it be more likely to but you know, i kept hearing in latin america, for instance, about the miracle clear or the said fidel castro provides cataract surgery to people throughout latin america. he is searching for travel around latin america and, he does that for a tiny fraction of the investment we make in latin america and is appreciated, americans can sell coca-cola and pepsi to people half a day's wage for yeah, we're not selling democracy as well as not selling our values and the things america has done to help with rather than apologizing for what think we should be trying in the very best of our skills from the private sector to make sure that we communicate who we are an exercise this could be

exercising to draw more people to the kinds promote the stability and peace in the book when it comes to writing which you say is wait a second,, they put in greenhouse gases because or that's what they are all unilaterally put in place some limits on ever going to compete with does that say to the world about our they don't call it warming. appoints primary concern is global warming, you have to look you in emissions will make sure

that actions are taken don't just put america and american workers at a disadvantagemaking adjustments and changes for with lets say the largest emitters of energies with the wife of a new factory in america? as a matter of fact, why keep i have to pay far more expensive prices or energy don't have those cap it can be more effective what about american leadership as a role model? >> guest: well, it's a last year as they're that's not the

kind of leadership what american pursue a course which to pursue a course course that would allow us to been an important byproduct of production for greenhouse gases dependent, with a lot more gas. that's a source than need more nuclear power have taking a farmer leader will putting ourselves at a competitive are

workers want. >> host: getting back to the idea of soft when you're talking about muslims, you make the case an evil one but the whole notion of moderate muslims what you read that you see in their instructions for people to to capture, takeover, not to simply go but in fact to go out and conquer. and you say part of what muslims teach. to muslims as a group. i is by the great majority of muslims a religion, which does not seek to dominate their neighbor carry out jihad against their neighbor or the west. but there is a strain of islam, which is referred to by various

names, jihad is some code which scholars who believe koran as they read it is a which the great majority of muslims, in my view, but the very narrow group is they seek. you look at a guess is the majority of people there would be delighted if they that matter the nonetheless, that theology that looks at everything that america is strong and is a see

for instance that democracy itself view is should the idea that individuals will create their own loss to the democratic process is a nephew a so almost everything we do is contrary to their view of how god wants banks to be in as a result they take a very violent means modern movement within the muslim world. i think our way forward in the muslim world is to support moderate government of our muslims and, ideology. >> host: why don't doing it themselves? >> guest: i are dealing with an al qaeda like movement, was

finding it difficult. there's several abu sayyaf, which were terrorizing the people work in partnership with training exercises, carrying the for the islands were abu sayyaf soft power application by our military and special forces and intelligence forces, we were able to turn the the numbers were reported out of the hundreds. >> host: in the a real test of special forces. we need to do more with special forces with a smaller footprint in terms of going and look so much of the philippines, but in the middle east at a do you think saudi arabians seem tolerant of this kind of?

>> guest: well, i don't know saudi arabia is enthusiastic about they realize they have been funded over which i of radical islam on may well have ended up as a significant threat to of the world of islam, there are so many sunni and shia so,

the different shapes

beddoe lead to the kinds of stories that came out of the british press and this president has been more critical on foreign soil than any american president in history. and that creates the impression that he somehow thinks he is about america and its history or there is something he needs to distance himself from. i think that's a mistake. harry truman and dean acheson following the second world wars that america would adapt a new strategy. having tried isolationism and having drawn two world wars despite that, they said book,

america needs to be active in the world, but we also need to promote our values: human rights, democracy, free trade, freedom. and finally we need to be strong, standing with our allies and those where they may exist. those principles of foreign policy i think the president has question and i think he would be wise to return to that when iranians take the streets for instance in protest and election that was unfair. they've spoken out clearly and sharply saying we support voices of freedom wherever they are. and so at bill clinton and not sending, at least in my view. >> host: what you're saying is this president in a way as failing to properly promote america to the world. >> guest: well, i think when you try and distance yourself from american history, when you suggest that somehow america needs to apologize to the world, but that elevateshe those who be

america first crowd but is a strong indication that america's values values that are entering a right for us and write for others who are willing to obtain them. that doesn't mean by the way we force our will. but it does mean we stayed to fight those nations who are seeking freedom. >> host: when you hear the criticism came from the bush administration in terms of the theater to find weapons of mass description or cowboy diplomacy being too high-handed another kind of kind of thing. don't you think they're those who might be weary for foreign policy? >> guest: there is a mental posture, where one does not have to be seen as being timid and american values as they think

this president is the bar moving to access. and if you will come you don't want to speak loudly and carry a small thick. there's a posture showing american strength, commitment to american ideals following through commitments we make, standing with their friends and allies. i think president bush did so. time and again he made it clear we would stand with our allies and people who oppose those who would receive the strong response from america. we were hit on 9/11. he took out the taliban and in a guinness fan. we believed we were receiving threat from saddam hussein, who by the way could have removed the threat instantly by saying, man. all of my facilities are up and peered at the international inspectors can look at the palace is, they can go anywhere they like to go. and take a look here because we don't want to have america come after us. he did not do that.

he could have done that it would not have suffered the way he did had he been willing to open up his nation to that kind of inspection. but those things being said, i respect president bush's strength in defending this country. and i think president obama is going to have to move in that course or you will be seen as being a weak president on the national stage. >> host: we are going to take a break now. said to's new book is called "no apology: the case for amerian greatness."

>> host: we are back with governor mitty romney, the author of "no apology: the case for american greatness." he described the book as a display of your position on key issues. it's really an intellectual journey on your part. so many books that you've read, so many ideas. but not a very personal book on some way. so for a second, let's talk about the personal. one of the things that caught my eye is your dad was born in mexico. >> guest: gal, his parents had escaped persecution of folks of their mormon faith. i guess it was his grandfather and parents who moved to mexico. and while they are, they joined a pretty good life, a comfortable life. and then there was revolution disruption in mexico and my my dad was five or six years old

they packed up, got on a train and came back to el paso and ultimately moved to idaho and they were in california, idaho, salt lake. from then on his dad was not terribly prosperous. he would've bankrupted more than once in his construction business. my dad worked as a laborer, putting a plaster. i think it was the precursor of both word. my dad never put enough money together and time together to complete college. he went on to the successful career in the business world, politics as well. >> host: he did run for president? >> guest: he ran for president. the constitution says, if my memory holds, that a president must be a natural born citizen. now he was not naturalized by virtue of the fact that his parents were both u.s. citizens. he was a natural born citizen and therefore could become the 98th president in the same

light as servicemen and women who had a child abroad, a child would not be prevented from becoming u.s. president to believe that having been u.s. soil because in this case which had become a u.s. citizen by birth. >> host: he went on to not only become governor, but also to be hud secretary for president nixon. and the bookie detailed how he was such a saving force in terms of american motors. the kremlin plays a big role in your book. you are not too proud to have the gremlin in your driveway. he thought other people are driving big fancy cars. but it made them rich. he was very successful. >> host: when he came into american motors come in the company had selected him some years before as the vice president. but the chief executive officer was well-known and respected. his famous george mason. when american motors was formed with the merger of nash, hudson, some old names, george mason and

shortly thereafter passed away and the port elected my father to become the new president of the company appeared on the stock went down dramatically when that happy and. i figure dropped to $5.50 a share. a couple years later it was trading at over $90 a share. so i'm pretty proud of the job that day. he was able to turn the company down, shore up its financial base, but the product so people wanted and that allowed him to obviously save a lot of jobs, creating successful enterprise. i'm afraid the rambler he so vigorously championed is now gone. cheap is still there, but enhance that are new and different than when he was running the enterprise. >> host: one of the interesting things about this is in the start of the book you see when your dad ran for president, he characterized the campaign in humorous terms of being like a miniskirt, short and revealing. and then you say your campaign in 08 was longer, but also

revealing. what did you learn? >> guest: well, you learned a lot about how challenging it is to be a presidential campaign. there are mistakes made as well. you know, i think of as defined in people's minds to a great degree by the questions that were asked by others. questions asked by the media. for instance i think we have 13 or so presidential debates on the republican side. so how i respond to those questions is how is defined in people's minds. you like to define yourself by the things you want to talk about, not what other people want to rescue. and that's part of the difficulty of the campaign. one of the blessings of being able to write a book you can lay out, these are the things i believe the country needs to do. so i can get beyond the questions and didn't thrill me of the concerns that i have. >> host: it takes up on