leaders the i am hy 5ing you on the committee organle aing the thing because we're doing it now. >> to watch this program in its entirety go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name at the top left of the screen and click search. .. >> activist phyllis benn issues

s is on in-depth. she's the author of 8 books including calling the shots, before and after, and her latest, ending the u.s. war in afghanistan. join our three-hour conversation with your phone calls, emails and tweets for phyllis bennis sunday at noon eastern on c-span2 and watch previous in-depth programs at booktv.org where you can find the entire weekend schedule. >> the one thing that we've absolutely learned over the last 30 years is that the economists and other sages of the economy are not very good at predicting what happens. >> robert samuelson has written about politics, the economy and social issues for over three decades. he'll join us sunday night on c-span's q & a. >> malcolm gladwell author of the "what the dog saw" and david

grann "author and sherlock holmes" discuss their essays and their writing careers at the new yorker. barnes & noble hosted the event. [applause] >> thank you all for coming and i thank the two of you for coming. barnes & noble tries to give me difficult assignments. i think of two writers who are very different from one another and you have to look what their connections. last summer i interviewed two other authors and it turns out they had a historical connection. pat conroy had given rick russo a blurb that pat conroy didn't remember but they were very warm with each other and so i was -- and i know you two both work for the new yorker. but i was looking for a deeper connection to ask you about your writing. and i noticed in david's new book "the devil and sherlock

holmes" -- in the piece about the obsessive conandoyle scholar who was found dead that in writing in sherlock holmes, the author of it in 1906 began to turn his powers of observation to solve real world mysteries including the case of the serial killer and it seems to me what both of you do and perhaps all reporters in general then -- that's something you have in common with detectives. that you turn your powers of observation on the world to solve real world mysteries. so i guess, david, if you could talk about that large task and then malcolm, i'll ask you about that, too. >> i think that's very much the chase that many of the stories are about the art of detection. and the protagonist in the stories "in the devil of sherlock holmes" are often salutes themselves even if they are not professional salutes. there's a story about a con man

who suddenly suspects he may be being conned. there is a story about scientists trying to unravel the mystery of this kind of semi mythological creature, the giant squid. there's a story about a working class detective who is investigating whether a post-modern polish novelist may have planted clues to a real murder in his novel and in the sherlock holmes' story, the main character, who is this scholar, is found dead in mysterious circumstances and he had become obsessed himself by trying to write a biography and tell a story and piece together and in the process is driven slightly mad. so in that story you have both the story of the protagonist trying to unravel the mystery of conan doyle and who he was and kind of be his salute and

narrator and to some extent i am the narrator and the salute, the watson and the holmes as i try to tell his story and figure out what he was after, what he was searching for to try to unravel the nature of his character and why he was garretted in mysterious circumstances. >> how do you go about researching a story like that, when you come to it, the story is called mysterious circumstances where nothing is really clear at the beginning of how things worked out. how do you map your way through mentally, physically through the research and the writing and come to your conclusions? 'cause that story ends very neatly as a sherlock holmes story might? >> in that case and in almost all the reporting case, the stories often begin with almost a clue, a tantalizing clue and i'm sure this is probably true of malcolm, too. when you hear somebody say

something, in the case of the sherlock holmes, somebody had mentioned just in passing that this great scholar had been found dead he in mysterious circumstances and that in its lone -- this is very tantalizing and so at that point i begin to try to first to read what's available about richard and then it's trying kind of like a treasure map to go from one person to another person or one document to another document. so it's trying to first penetrate the inner circle, who knew him, and who could tell me about that. in that case what was so interesting is that the case had been taken up by all these amateur salutes who all these sherlockians and other scholars who saw this case as a real life mystery that was greater than anything in which conan doyle had invented and so they were working the case in their own way and that allowed me to try to follow them and make sense of their discoveries and it also

allowed me when i try to do in these stories that you go into a world that you wouldn't see like a subculture, a hidden world and who knew there were these people who were fanatical about sherlock holmes and conan doyle. >> before i ask malcolm the next question, they are so obsessed, can you explain that? >> yes, who again -- there are two clubs, there are the sherlockians who pretend that conan doyle does not exist. and, therefore, will never prefer to him by name. and sherlock holmes is a real character and, in fact, they produce more scholarship than probably all these books in this bookstore. one person said never has so much been written for so fewer and the level of this scholarship is to try to look at the stories and prove any inconsistencies to show they are true stories as opposed to the fiction and the conan doyle scholars who recognize conan

doyle as the author and writer of the sherlock holmes cannon. the protagonist was found dead in misteerus circumstances he's the one who went back and forth between groups. he was bi-something, yes. >> what i wanted to ask, malcolm, in david's book, he writes about the search for this lost city in the amazon and he talks about one person whom he met in the '90s, i think, whose name is james lynch and what he says he was drawn into intellectual as well as physical quests in order to learn some little known aspects of the world. it seems the similarity between what you do is yours is sort of the -- on the physical trail of people and then that you're doing that same kind of intellectual trail of people. what do you think of that? and how do you think yourself as a modern detective? >> it's amazing. [laughter] >> my method means i can write my stories about him in my

apartment. and david has to go to the amazon. i would no more go to the amazon than i would go to the moon. >> i would say malcolm is much smarter than me. [laughter] >> yes, i think that's absolutely right. [laughter] >> no, no, i didn't mean -- [laughter] >> i was referring -- [laughter] >> i was referring to your comment. [laughter] >> i didn't say -- >> what would you say if you read that exchange? [laughter] >> no. [laughter] >> did i answer the question? [laughter] >> i guess the way david was talking about -- coming up a tip or something, you've said that you come up with your ideas because you've sort of become obsessed with something where you want to figure something out so i guess the intellectual

quest you're on to figure out how people work? >> it's funny. i grew up on -- speaking of sherlock holmes, i grew up on a kind of steady diet of british murder mysteries. that's all i read -- in fact, that may be all i still read. you go into the hudson booksellers at la guardia and all those paper backs, i've read every one of those. and some of my oldest memories my father reading sherlock holmes stories and father brown and agatha christie so i must have read 50 agatha christie by the time i was 10. what do you do if you love mystery stories and you can't write fiction? well, you write some kind of facsimile, which is -- you know,

nonfiction mysteries but the minute i think i could write dialog, i'm gone. [laughter] >> was that a struggle in writing outliers where you made a conscious effort to concentrate on people as opposed to the experiments or the social experiments, psychological experiments that were in blink or in the tipping point? >> i wanted to stop being -- i wanted my writing to be kind of a little less chilly. and so i was -- i had made a very conscious effort. partly actually from reading people like david and being so taken by his writing and thinking i should go in that direction as well. made a conscious effort to write more about people and their stories as opposed to kind of theories and their theirticians. >> and your book is divided in very similar ways as david's

into sections. so it opens with profiles or it has a number of profiles. and so what do you do when you come to the dialog? how do you make it sound real? >> you can read them and i don't. [laughter] >> but -- microfiles don't mean spend a lot of time profiling them. you find out that we quickly move on to other things. in fact, one of the profiles -- [inaudible] >> the profile that begins what the dog saw, i'm so accustomed when profiling someone to really just talk to them a couple of hours -- he moved so chatty, it's back in the day of cassette tapes. i ran out of tapes and i thought you would only be good for two hours. [laughter] >> but in fact you're good for more than i had to make up an excuse that i had a doctor's appointment. and i got in my car -- i was in

l.a., you know, drove all the way down the hill 'cause you have to drive, you know, 5 miles to buy anything in l.a. and bought cassette tapes and came back and resumed the interview. so that was a rare case of -- >> do you think he would have had a gadget on hand that would have worked. >> yes, you would thought he would have a tape-o-matic, yes. >> well, david, going back and forth between -- i guess actually i wanted to ask you, i mean, you were saying about i might not or people might not find the dialog convincing. i read and i forget exactly where it was that you made a distinction between persuading the reader and engaging the reader. you wanted to engage the reader -- >> it's persuasion and convincing. so this is a distinction that i didn't make but rather it's a very distinction of sociology because the name of the sociologist who came up with it i'd forgotten. who wrote this really wonderful essay where he talks about these

are two very different modes that when you convince someone of something, you marshall a series of logical facts and assemble. and present an argument that ought to be persuasive to anyone who is of sound mind? it's kind of a general -- to persuade someone is not about marshalling of facts to a broad general audience. it's about using emotion and stories for a specific audience, for a narrow, carefully selected audience. and i started out in journalism wanting to convince people of things. and now all i want to do is persuade them of things. >> well, what's interesting in the story of trial by fire that's also in this book which is about man in texas, cameron willingham who is executed but seems innocent of the crime that he committed. that he quote a lawyer who is

saying about -- who he represents that a lawyer really doesn't believe that his client is innocent. so he's working to persuade -- i mean, in the way that you were talking about rather than convince. i mean, so a lawyer on trial -- in a trial is sort of what you were talking about, i think. and then i just remembered that you said you first wanted to be a lawyer. so it sort of works perfectly. >> i think in both of our work, i think we both believe in telling stories. malcolm's stories were engaging and they were really built around stories and narrow tives and character and have kind of an arc and they go on this journey and that's much more satisfying than picking up a scientific journal. and in my stories, similarly, i really want to tell a story. i want to take the reader on a journey. and i really see my job as a nonfiction writer as gathering the facts and presenting them and showing them.

and i try to have faith that the reader can interpret them and clearly i make judgments and i'm organizing things but i was a terrible op-ed writer. i just don't think that way. i don't think in that kind of convincing way. the way i see the world is in stories and characters moving through these stories. and really my job is to show the reader what i've seen or what these characters have seen and i also grew up on literary fiction and i loved reading sherlock holmes when i was young but the thing that draws me to these stories is that they are not -- while the characters often to be sherlockian and i aspire to be sherlockian we are inevitably mortal and we don't always see the picture-perfectly and you see the stories about misinterpreting data or too much information. we can't see as clearly as we wish we could or we want to pretend to be. and so these stories are not

fairytales and they, therefore, end without that kind of sense of qed. >> so much of what you write about, malcolm, is about observation and certainly that's in blink how do you have the immediate grasp of the story where you're obsessed. both of you in writing, in your introductions et cetera about what interests you, you both talk about stories that you've become obsessed with, that david in his book talks about, the story who loves grit and he becomes obsessed with it and you don't wash and you don't shave, and et cetera. and you seem to say the same thing. i mean, that when you have an idea and then it becomes obsessive to you. and you become obsessed with the ideas in blink. so how does that obsession work versus the observational powers that you talk about about. does it always prove in the long term that you were right at the

core? >> no, the -- i mean, the reason -- the reason obsession is necessary, i think, is that to tell the kind of stories that i would like to tell and david would like to tell takes a lot of time. it takes a lot of time because most what is interesting about the story you don't figure out for a long time. you discover it at the end or it's because of some turn in the middle. so i very often start a story thinking i'm going to say x and then end up saying y, right? and i expect to end up saying y and i don't expect where i is that right but you only get those kinds of twists and turns if you're willing to kind of wrestle and play with something for a long time. and some of the stories that i write, have been in the back of my head for years before i actually -- i mean, they're things i've been thinking about. of all the stories in "what the dog saw" at least in one case

there was about six or seven years between having the idea and actually writing the story. >> in the case -- there's a story in here about the world kind of prison escape artists, the world's greatest prison artist in the 100 century that broke out of prison and the kayak he took was rub a dub and when i initially read of that in terms of the length of time, it was several years before i did the story. and he would never agree to speak. and i wrote him a letter every month in application and i just said if you ever change your mind, i'm here. if you ever change your mind i'm here. it would just be a form letter and i would sign in and maybe change one word and eventually after two years he said come on

down. >> he finally found the time. [laughter] >> i think -- at that point he was about 80. i guess he didn't think he was going to get out although he had aspirations. but just to go to the other point not going with these stories. these stories are journeys. and, for example, there's a story in the collection about the search for the giant squid. and i found out that there were these great giant squid hunters that have spent their lives obsessively find this creature who had never been documented alive by a scientists, there were dead carcasses 30 feet long with ten cals and eyes the size of heads that were seen floating on the surface of the sea but no one had ever encounter these alive and they had heard sailor stories and there were 20,000 leagues under the sea and i contacted this man down in zealand and i convinced our boss at the new yorker that it was worthwhile sending me down to

new zealand on this story. he was heading out to try to capture -- he had this theory of capturing a baby and trying to grow it in captivity and so i went out with him. and i had spent months on the story and then weeks in new zealand with him in really arduous circumstances going out in a cyclone with this clito catch this giant baby squid and there came a point in the story where i was with him where it looked like we captured this baby giant squid. this man had been searching his whole life for. and i had that moment of ecstasy and i said, thank god, this trip wasn't for nothing and we got it and we're going to take it home and we're going to grow it and i'm going to watch it and this is going to be huge, literally and metaphorically. [laughter] >> and then just like, it slipped away. and we both were looking at the cacontainer where we thought we had it. we had been up for and working in tough conditions and it was gone like an illusion and i

thought oh, my god my story is like -- it's over. what am i going to do. i've been here and i've done this journey. and in other words, i had hoped for x and suddenly i was looking at y and y didn't look very good and then i went back that night and i thought about it. and why e- -- y was the story it was supposed to be, this man was obsessively there and it slipped from his grasp and the up to datos from that moment was true than the artificial construct i had conceived in my mind. >> that seems like a very -- did that lead you to the loss city of z and the story of faucet an explorer who went for the city of z who did not have exactly the same story or conceived to come close and having a barrage in the end.

>> certainly. many of these characters are tracking something that is illusive and what's interesting about these characters is both their obsession because it makes good story-telling. they're fascinating characters. there's a reason why ahab is one of the greatest characters in literature. [inaudible] >> but what also intrigues me about some of these stories is what they are obsessed with. i don't say this person is obsessed with this and i'm going to do their story. if it was the case of the giant squid, well, here was this incredible creature that seemed mythological and opened up how unexplored the sea was and the same with faucet. and i read these books there could not be a complex society in amazon. it had to be very primitive for small nomadic tribe it was a

hostile environment. the object of his obsession was also deeply fascinating. >> malcolm, your characters are about actual experiments. do you feel -- do you wish that -- they seem to be less open-ended than the stories that david tells. i mean, how do you work that? how do you work through the sort of uncertainty of a lot of the science in your books? i mean, how do you make that work as a story? >> it's a good question. i mean, what you try to do is find a principle or an idea in science and then illustrate it with a story. keeping in mind -- there's always a level of uncertainty in science and so you are kind of -- you're choosing a particular past, both

interesting and kind of thought-provoking path to take and you necessarily have to -- to kind of simplify things along the way, which is -- and i think that readers are sophisticated enough to understand that. that what i tend to be doing in my stories is posing a question, what if we thought about something this way? and then kind of -- and 90% of people are, i think, are sophisticated enough to understand that you can -- you can hit the pause button in your own train of thought and you can go in another direction for a lot of and it can actually be a lot of fun to do that even if you don't ultimately agree with the conclusion. like i said, i think i say in the introduction to "what the dog saw" that i'm not interested in winning converts to my way of seeing the world. i'm simply interested in provoking people to think about things differently even if they ultimately go back to their old

way of thinking. >> i mean, not only in the titles but in the arguments in your book, the arcs, the narrative arcs, you do have that way of crystallizing the idea that people do take away. the point is a catchphrase that people have a sense what it is as a cultural phenomenon but i remember as i read your books as they came out that they are the kind of books that as you're reading them and you're sort of surprised and debased and you want to read allowed to someone, listen to what this is. did you ever think of this? i mean, you have that ability to sort of make the thing a certain way at least for a little while until they come back to their senses, i don't know. [laughter] >> i mean, the thing -- your ideas about blink that you argue is so compelling. what i'm interested in, david,

you are talking about kind of a doggedness when you say -- to get this bank robber to speak to you, you trailed after him for years. and similarly, at the lost city of z, you are in search of this very old document in a brazilian national library. it hasn't been seen in decades or a century or something like that. and somehow you're able to persuade the librarian to actually let you see it. so if you could just tell us about that. what leads you to do things like that? take that risk? >> to take that risk. usually it's not so planned or preconceived. usually i kind of just bore in and if there's some clue or piece of information, i'm just very focused in on getting it. i don't know, you know, where

exactly -- i guess part of it is like a lot of the characters in the story. i really want to make sense of things. i want to understand what i have been investigating and it's very frustrating to me to have some clue that's locked up in a vault that i can't see, and i really want to get that. and so, you know, in the case of this document which was in the brazilian library because it was deteriorating so much and faucet who's the main character in the lost city of z had looked at it and come up with a theory that there might be an ancient civilization in the jungle. usually -- i guess, you know, what i find often pays off if you hang around long enough. i really don't fit any of the stereotypes of being an abrasive reporter. i really don't. i don't -- i don't, you know, grill people. i just to try to observe them

and let them be. but i kind of hang around. and if you hang around enough, the bank robber will ultimately maybe say come on down. you're the only one left. [laughter] >> well, in this case he had been refused access to this from new york. in rio and places like that. and you meet the librarian -- he goes there and starts to make his case and she basically, after he finishes, well, i already have it laid out for you 'cause i figured if you were willing to come here you must really need to see it. so she's sort of a hero in the book. but i was wondering, malcolm, you now have such a famous name for doing what you do. do the people that you want to study, be it, write about their work, they more receptive, less receptive. are you less than a fly on the wall than you could have been 10 years ago?

>> i don't know. i didn't detect any difference. you know, because my stories have always been -- i very rarely write things about someone that that person isn't happy with, right. so my stories isn't confrontational. what i do is finding what is interesting about someone's work and celebrating it at some level and so i never really -- because that's been approach, it's never been difficult to get people to talk to you and because particularly with academics tried to take care and so i could have an intelligent conversation with him and be careful how i describe it -- you know, when i started at the new yorker, things were very much similar to the way they are now. it has very surprisingly made little difference to how i do my job. >> so you don't have some of the academics who want to share in

the profits of what you're writing about, their studies, if that galled them in some way? >> it's funny. not at all. not in the slightest. i mean, as a child of an academic i sort of know -- feel i know something about the psychology of those who go into academia. the reason you go into academia is you're not motivated by -- if you wanted make a quick buck, would you really get a ph.d. in sociology? >> well, no, i just got a ph.d. in english this week and it's not worth anything. [laughter] >> it's a nice way of saying is that you're intrinsically motivated not extrinsically motivated so good for you. [laughter] >> you were always so intrigued

as a child that he could spend the day working inside his head. that led to other kinds of thoughts but that -- how much as a writer and you say you stay in your apartment and he goes to new zealand and how do you work it in your head and make it come out right even though you're spending more time on the trail? >> in terms of -- i think as malcom said, i have some preconceived idea or intuition of what a story might be. but you often find yourself in different places. and i think some of my doggedness probably comes from insecurity. a feeling if i just work harder and get the information, i can get a better story. but for the case like the cameron todd willingham story which is about this man who was executed for setting afire that killed his three children and

may, in fact, been innocent and when i began that story, i called his defense attorney. and you mentioned this. and his defense attorney said, oh, yeah, he did it. he definitely did it. and i hung up the phone, well, he has to be guilty, his own defense attorney thinks he's guilty and so that was kind of where i began. and then i went on a journey that began to raise really serious questions about the reliability of the evidence in the case. >> and so many of the -- well, that story in particular is about crime. and there's another story, not about a murder but about it'sity. i don't know if it's identity theft of a french man and it's so haunting of this man -- a frenchman who poses as the lost son of an american family and convinces them -- i mean, against the evidence and it's chilling how he burrows in and

dupes these people. but i'm just wondering especially with the story about willingham, are you at all conscious of forebears at the new yorker like truman capote? are you concerned about the reportage and lillian ross and the names will go on, truman capote, malcom gladwell and others. what is that legacy as you go into a story where there's such a rich history? >> i think it's an asset in the sense that i look at a lot of these people. i read "in cold blood" while i was working on the willingham story and i read the executioner song which cannot come out of the new yorker. another great crime, nonfiction

story. or at least based on nonfiction and they help me as a template but when i work in a story i try to not to think of them, and if i think of truman capote i will never get a word out. so i use it as inspiration. and i often -- for each one of my stories, i will look to certain stories, and i will read them and say, okay, these provide -- sometimes inspiration is not so linear. it's about a difference of opinion. perhaps it's about trying to portray a character in a different way or get inside a character and maybe i'll read something about jenna malcom and i look at these and they help me and once i work on that story i try to forget all that stuff. i would be paralyzed if i was thinking too much truman capote. >> are there writers who inspire you? >> yes. >> malcom, do you have writers who inspire you?

>> like i said -- >> other than -- i mean, that's pretty large but -- >> many new yorker writers. like i said, i think of david's stuff. i've been reading it ever since he started at the new yorker. i have been very influenced about thinking maybe i should leave my apartment from time to time. [laughter] >> and also at the other end someone like adam gopnick has had a huge impact on my writing. because the thing about adam -- i regard adam as the -- as the absolute quintessential reporter of the new yorker because the stories he does -- maybe you have to be a writer to understand this. the degree of difficulty is so high -- he's often taken something -- there's nothing there. [laughter] >> right? i mean, it's just kind of proprietary -- it's some sort of

proprietary thing and then he has turned it into gold. and to do that, i'm just in awe of that and i read some of the stories, sometimes i'll read one paragraph four times in a row to figure out how did he do that? and there's an incredible level -- that idea is something -- it's the missing component in critical analysis critics look at something and they make a passing judgment and they'll say, is this good or is this bad? but that's only the first question you have to ask. the second question you have to ask was, how hard was it? and if you're -- if you're telling an extraordinary story out of something that is incredibly ordinary you get points if you can pull it off. and i feel like with adam, he has sort of opened the possibilities as a writer. you can write -- you can take just by virtue of your own ingenuity -- i mean, i don't have his ingenuity or his writing ability, but he allows me to believe it is possible to do ordinary things with ordinary

material and that is -- that's been incredibly -- sort of an incredibly powerful lesson as a writer. >> and there are stories i find and i read joseph mitchell periodically and i could never imitate them and i just kind of know that. i still have never figured out quite how he constructs a story and it's not chronological or they don't fit and like you're saying, how he managed to put all these facts in this very idiosyncratic order that comes with the power and i read them periodically and i'm hoping at some point -- like i'll find that buried secret. oh, that's the key. that's exactly what he did but i can't even deconstruct them as a writer. there are a lot of writers can kind of deconstruct what they did and there's some i kind of tip my hat. >> you can really torture yourself. [laughter] >> trying to learn from -- i was reading some aj leling and i was

struck down -- i mean, he's cruising around paris and literally you'll read him forever and there's these turns of phase. but i could never like that. >> i mean, in fact, in a weird way, part of the thing is what motivates me in finding the stories i find is a belief that if i can find a great story, if i can find the gold, then i can tell you a great story. and so part of my motivation when you ask me of getting these things is that i just want to get the gold because it's a lot easier if i can find the gold and treasure and open it up. >> it must be quite an obsession with you because you explain that you're actually a lot like malcom and you really don't like leaving your apartment at all. >> that's so not true. all you do is leave your apartment. [inaudible]

[laughter] >> but, you know, it really is true. other than when i report -- and i think -- somebody asked me -- >> other than -- >> other than when i report. >> that's like a massive caveat. >> i don't leave for seven or eight that's >> i would have a very, very boring existence if it weren't for these reporting chases. [laughter] >> well, i'm curious to both of you, what is your confidence in the future of the publishing industry, the magazine industry to be able to support the kind of long born stories and the reporting that you do going around the world at the new yorker and other magazines has funded? what does the future hold for that kind of reporting when you're talking about ej nebling which goes back to world war ii and before?

>> i'm very optimistic. because all that's gone away -- all that has appeared to go away is the kind of -- is the viability of the existing business model for supporting kind of journalism. the need for that journalism has not gone away at all. when i talked to adam, if you read, for example, adam's story which is one of the most incredible magazine stories i ever read, at the end of the story you cry. everybody cries. the need of a human being to be moved by something that they read is a constant. we needed to be moved by literary experience a thousand years ago. and we need -- we will need to be moved 1,000 years from now, right? so as long as -- you know, all we're doing is serving very, very fundamental human needs. the need to be engaged by a

story is fundamental. it's never going away. so you can't have a world -- i mean, sometimes you think, well, we're going to have a world of tweets and blog entries and, you know, 300-word website entries but you can't have that because none of those satisfy the need to be moved or the need to be engaged in a story or the need to be -- so we'll just find a new model to support, that's all. people are assiduously working on this problem right now and they'll solve it. and when they solve it, we'll all be fine. [laughter] >> so i finally figured out the essential difference between fundamental pest mist. he's an optimist. i actually agree with him on this notion which i think in many ways both what we do and also what our stories are about and many of what my stories are about are people i'm piecing together their narratives but they're piecing together their narratives. they're trying to tell stories

and make sense of their lives and arrange the facts in a particular at her that has a certain logic and meaning and emotional meaning, whether it would be the fireman from 9/11 who suffered amnesia and he's the only survivor from his group that went down. they all perished. he's trying to make sense what happened to him but also this larger calamity and i think that's something that is wired into our dna and it goes back whether you look at why the bible is powerful. if you look at any kind of forms of literature. and i don't think that is going to go away. i do worry about the economics of it but he's a smart guy and hopefully he'll come up with a business plan. because there is -- there is a cost to this stuff. there really is. i mean, that willingham story, you know, i spent six months at least on that story, you know, whether trying to get government records, trying to track down

the jury foreman who didn't have a house or phone and i could not have done that without the new yorker's backing and financing. so that does concern me because right now we are in this moment of chaos. but i do think that desire and need doesn't go away and so hopefully malcom is looking at the paradigm that could support this will come in to play and it's just at a moment in crisis. >> what is so haunting in the lost city of z when you finally get to, you know, the middle of the amazon or talking to the people who have studied this, you know, that a lot of people, whether erroneously or not have believed that the amazon was so inhospitable to human life that there was no civilization which is the need for storytelling that you're talking about, about the art and that you described as a human need and you come to that city and then leave at the end -- i mean, an open question about whether they were capable