was, lyndon's totally in the pocket of the pentagon now. he believes everything they tell him, and he will have 500,000 troops in vietnam by the end of the year. and i thought to myself, it's what booth louis -- clare boothe luce said about him, he's crazy. it sounded really unbalanced to me. it wasn't unbalanced. ..

>> socioeconomic, and the population. then for the last 30 years we've had a professional army. not a bad job, and what their job is is to kill. that's their job. and that's what they get paid for. when i was in, we were itching for a fight and we were trained for a fight. but we were civilian soldiers, so to speak. they are professional soldiers, and that's what they get paid to do is to kill. so could you comment further on

the dynamic here, the difference? >> i'm not sure much, it's called for. that's a pretty interesting statement, and i suppose one thing i -- [inaudible] >> let me use that to make this point. charlie rangel, you know, has introduced a bill. he knew it was going to go anywhere. basically to revive the draft in order to impose the burdens of war an equity stake. we're going to have a war, let's have consensus around it. let's not have this strange situation with his passive discontent we have a majority against the war but the war continues anyway. we'll come in theory that makes sense. in practice he knows it's not going anywhere. and one reason it's not going anywhere is -- well, a couple of

reasons. one is that to justify it across the board trip just to make a strong case that the war is in accordance with american values, and that it is necessary. and one thing that i didn't talk about in my little talk because i saw the clock moving, is the idea that a war is necessary, or that a war is a last resort, is the acme of foolishness. there have been cases in american history, and maybe world war ii was one of them, when after munich, after hitler tore up the munich agreement there was nothing more to do. than to fight. but in virtually every other case if you analyze it, two things, you find two things are true. i will get you a question. i'm sorry, this is a diversion. one is that the americans don't negotiate very well. you know, we often break off

negotiations or we claim that they are breaking off negotiations, but really we did and so forth. not interested often in negotiations. you know that in the case of the first gulf war. also, what hussein wanted to do finally was to leave kuwait with his troops without any concessions, and bush the first said we will see him in baghdad. in other words, that war was not about getting hussein out of kuwait. that war was about destroying the iraqi army, the iraqi armed forces. and occupying iraq went to the sanctioning iraq. negotiations sometimes doesn't exist because we don't want it to. but even when we do negotiate, or are willing to negotiate sometimes, we consistently confuse negotiation with conflict resolution.

or to put it a different way, a more generous way, people haven't learned yet in washington what conflict resolution is. that is not sitting down at a table with a gun under the table instead of on top of the table and marketing from strength. it's analyzing the problem that brought the conflict about so that you can do something about that, so that you can eliminate the cause of the conflict. people around the world are catching on as to how this works and it's been used in northern ireland and it's been used throughout eastern europe. it was used in macedonia. it's being used with the turks and our means at the moment. it's been used all over the place, but we, include barack obama in the week, have not yet learned that negotiation, if negotiation is just marketing, it's just another use of strength. but if negotiation is analysis of the problem, and the development of agreed upon

solutions to the problem, it's something entirely different. and until you do that, war is never a last resort. if you haven't tried conflict resolution, you can't say war is a last resort just because negotiations broke down. and one more thing about the thing to get back to question, one more thing about the draft issue, one of the things that i think we have to start facing is that even people, the best intentioned people and the most antiwar people find it difficult to look the economic realities of war in the face. one of the economic realities is that we've been practicing what some people call military teams use them. for the past at least 30 years. maybe longer. ever since world war ii perhaps. military-industrial demand has replaced by keynesian economists and others consider a deficit in

demand. and the question is how can we make up for that? how can we supply that demand without producing weapons of destruction? and people are wielding those weapons of destruction. if we are shying away from that problem, is it because we're afraid of putting the government in competition with private business and socialism is above that we can't talk about the next economy? i don't know. but i know that we are in -- in a way we're being morally compromised by our knowledge that if we actually did get out of the war business we would have an economic crisis that would be a lot worse than when we have now, in less we solve that problem. and on the jobs -- this gets to the draft business -- that the draft, i mean, i just got back from a trip to the midwest where

i visited some towns in southern indiana were i know some people, and all the trucks, all the pics ups, they've got support the troops side and their slides all over the place. i went into a bar, do a little participant research over a beer, and talk to the guys at the bar and said, you know, a lot of guys are into supporting the troops. one of the guys at the bar said, well, we should, they are our children. and somebody else said, what else are they supposed to do? nothing else to do around here in the de- industrialized midwest or the town where was was richmond, indiana. used to be an auto parts and. no more auto parts. does nothing to do comedy to go into the army or some other

security system. there's a prison that by it seems we need to start talking about -- this is part of the reality. this is what keeps us at war. and when i review my own book critically i will cite it doesn't talk about this enough. [laughter] >> i'm a little uneasy with that approach that seems similar to an economist that leaves it markets operate rationally. it seems to me when you talk about, that people go to war or that americans, there's a religion, has been commit war when it seems to be justified. if you substitute self-interest which is a very small change for self-defense, then you have a beast of sometimes a wounded beast that is acting

irrationally. and it may be -- i mean, the spectrum of what self-interest might be my be anything to profit or desire to stay in office. but if one thinks that fundamentally americans go to war in rational principles you may be missing the point entirely. >> and i don't. you know, i hesitate to use the word rational, or irrational when one is talking about values. some people might say that's a high rationality or some people might, you know, whatever. i don't want to go there. what i do think, however, what i know and i think you would agree

is that the government was no more likely to nominate -- invade iraq and say they're interested in the oil than they were with the philippines and say we're interested in sugar, or cube and say we're interested in the tobacco. they know people in america are not going to buy it, that they may be very self interested in their own lives, yeah, they may be hustling to make money or whatever, in their own lives. they know that it's not right. , to send their children, their loved ones, their parents, whatever to go out and get killed for oil or for sugar or for geopolitical advantage somewhere, or for the bagram air force base in afghanistan, or for the camp in kosovo or whatever. that's the way elites talk about

their interest. it's not the way ordinary people talk about their interest, and it's on the cases in which the ordinary people are on much more solid ground. because of that they have to make -- the elites have to make the appeal based on these, on values, not on interests. and it's a surprise to me and such an interest base, it's a surprise to me that political scientists and historians didn't see this more clearly. in part because they are so enamored in their own interest there is, it seems to me. yes, sir. >> over 50 years ago general dwight david eisenhower, in his famous farewell speech, warned about the military-industrial complex. eyesight that you all of my friends. do you cover that in your bookmarks and the second half of my question is, i worked hard to

elect barack obama. i thought he was a reconciler, and at all probably have been since you the book, but he bought hook, line, and sinker lock, stock and barrel the military-industrial complex that he inherited from bush. any comments on that? >> no. not really. on the military-industrial but i don't talk about that in my book. perhaps i should have. here are a couple of very good books that came out a little before mine that do, which i think is one reason i didn't go into it in more detail. tom englehart book, the death of victory culture, which is a very interesting book, talks about it. and there's another one of talks quite a lot about but i forget

the name of the book right now. i will find it later and i will mention it to you. it's a very important statement. a statement that always struck me as amazingly innocent, that is, he did know about this beforehand? you know, but i think it didn't. you know, i think he was a fighting general. he was a political general, but his business was war. and i think when he saw the way the people, had been invaded by war, he can't even have the war department anymore. now at the defense department. it's not a war budget, it's a defense budget. that i think he was surprised and upset. [inaudible] >> i think he also, he was under the illusion that presidents make decisions. to the extent to which, it's

hard to know what is going on with obama. it's hard for me to know what's going on, hard for anyone to think i think what's going on with obama. and since there is a parallel maybe, that is to say i have no reason to believe that obama has ever thought about the structure, about social structure. he thinks about identity a lot and he thinks about, i think he is a sincere, you know, reconciler when it comes to identity-based issues, but the idea that there are also structural issues, that there are class issues that are more than identity, include identity but there are more than identity, the idea that the economy is in the hands -- the economy is in the hands of a few

people relatively few interests, very powerful interest, as we know, who drove the economy off a cliff right before he came into office. and all he could think of to do was to put them back in charge, the same people who drove the economy off a cliff. now, that's -- it's hard to blame him innocents for this because if you ask the question, well, what else should have done or who else was there, he could have brought, i suppose he could have appointed paul krugman to a higher position or something. but, in fact, people who are not in that relatively small group of experts were disqualified from being experts. you know, i think in a

hierarchical organized system like that you have a severe marginalization of people with alternative views, alternative visions. how to structure an economy. who even asked that question? you can go to any economics department in the universe, i think including the one around the corner and not hear that question asked very often. what alternative ways are there to structure an economy other than the one we have right now? the people have been asking and answering those questions, and i could give you a list of names of them, i know some of them are, but they are considered nuts are visionaries or impractical, or to green or two left over to local, or to this or do that. so you have this now strange situation. i think it's a definition of the system in serious trouble. people would certainly defined as a symptom, systemic crisis.

when the only people you have available to fix something that has gone wrong are the same people who made it go wrong. so, you know, eight need for a broadening for discussion that includes many more voices than the voices we've been listening to up to now, on the other -- on the economy and i would say across the board come on poverty in america. 15 million people unemployed in this country, half of them for more than 21 weeks, and we say oh, well. >> if we have a 60% opposition to war and strong antiwar groups at all times, and a build up in the press and elsewhere to

discussing whether to go to war, u.s.a. conflict resolution advocate, i think your essential point as we go to war to serve. and i wonder if we don't have a structural flaw in our democratic system that as a democracy, 60% oppose the war we keep going there, if we don't have washington too much on a hair trigger. what seems to happen is the president is committed to it and moves in, and on a temporary basis and then everybody either have to be disloyal to our troops have been sent in or has to start funding it. it seems as if the president now has too much power. >> i think that's very well put. i'm not sure if they question too much power to little countervailing power. [inaudible] >> i think that's absolutely

right, i agree with it, with everything you said. i would just add that we are seeing some change in a in congress. in the last attempt, in the last bill to fund the afghan war, 53 congressmen voted against. congresspeople. that's not, you know, 400, but it's double the amount of opposition the time before that. there some growth i think, what's exciting about that is more people willing to take a stand. more people willing to say okay, call me unpatriotic. what i'm doing is not unpatriotic. nevertheless i think that what you said is quite right. >> it's too late because mechanically the president can

launch the invasion and then invasion and then it's up to everybody else to force them to come back spent and i think what i'm saying before about the economic issues, i think that becomes more relevant. one reason that i think, one reason that holds us back, one reason that it seems too late is that people have gotten jobs from it. et cetera, people gotten contracts from it. people gotten jobs from a. conflict resolution students can wear the largest graduate program in the country in conflict resolution, about 350 masters and doctoral students, and the question is what did he do when they get out? well, some of them go, as you might imagine, some of them work for government. some of them work for foreign governments. many of them work for ngos. many of them work for relief organizations, care or to develop and work. but more and more, it's the

government that is offering them the jobs. because this goes back to what you said about the army that fights, that our people are trained to fight and that's what they do, they fight. well, more and more the army's mission is getting more complicated than that. and because they are an occupation force that is expected to function in many ways as a development organization, winning the hearts and minds and so forth means building the schools and bridges and making peace between tribal leaders and all the rest of it, petraeus approach to conflict means soldiers have got to be trained in conflict resolution. now, it's not conflict resolution when you're a party to a conflict. it's something else. you are using the techniques of conflict resolution in order to promote your site of the conflict, but they are often jobs to my students, and

contracts to my colleagues. so, without dealing with the economic clout that is involved here, i'm not sure that we're going to be able to mount the kind of protest or develop the kind of resistance that i'm hoping that we can develop, what you call a hair trigger. >> so, cuts in britain, and they are projecting that they're going to 280,000 jobs in the green sector by 2030 or 2050. they're offering an alternative, to locally we are working here, you know, always worked with veterans for peace and then i went off on my own, working for 25% solution. rand paul and barney frank, but it's so hard to get the populace to connect the dots.

you know, you've got to cut out this militarism in order to give you domestic a chance. >> it's true. it's true. >> as i look at history, one of the things i see myself as a parallel to what you talk about in terms of the moral nature of work, which is the rationalization of war, and as i look back at different wars that you talk about in your book, there's almost always a racial element whether it is japan in world war ii, the seminole war, various wars. and there's also the element of the wars that go back from king philip's war, 200 years later to the closing of the frontier. in the example i always tell people his president mckinley at the beginning of the philippine war saying we had to go to the philippines to christianize our little brown brothers who had been christianize for a couple hundred years. so i ask, could you reflect on the nature of the

rationalization of war indies dialogues about morality? thinking especially about the indian wars that went on and how those were not wars against a foreign enemy per se, but they still was something that people justified as necessary. >> yeah, certainly an interesting think about the indian war is all the confusion about what to make of the indians, that the europeans experienced when they first got here. because for a time they thought that they were the children of god. they might be lost 10 tribes, they might be the noble savage. and it was only when they didn't do what they were told to get off the land and so forth that new englanders decided they were the children of the devil. but in a chapter the book would talk about able indies, there's a section about basic attitudes of the dialogue -- diabolical

enemy. attribute to talk about art, he's a tyrant, the enemy is a tyrant. k., enough said about that. he seeks world domination. there some discussion of that. he is inhumanly cruel. tsd sql, lever and militias, like the father of lies, you know? so that pearl harbor fits very well there, the notion of sneak attack idea come you can't trust these people and so on so you could never negotiate with people who are tricky and militias. he is radically unlike us is the last category. he is radically unlike us so i read this to you quickly. this attribute of the evil enemy is often said milan or crystallized and differences of skin color and racial features. from the indian wars to the u.s.

wars against filipino insurgents, japanese, north koreans and in of muslims, america's enemies have been thought of as inferior nonwhite others. even when physical differences between white americans and adversaries were nonexistent or minimal as in the case of the germans in two world wars, let this -- cartoons, posters and other representations are equally as racial and ethnic said tests were protect the bad guys as swarthy villains, and i've got a couple of illustrations in this book. the first book i ever had illustrations. and so do you can't this of course, but why am i holding it up? this is a poster that says, this is a world war i poster. this is about germans. germans, german americans, the largest ethnic group in the united states at the time of

world war i, our german-americans. americans eating frankfurters and hamburgers, not thinking much about frankfurters or hamburgers when they did it. american university system modeled on the german system. germany, the home of culture, et cetera. this is before hitler. this is just kaiser bill, you know, who is a down-to-eblunder, a plunderer. so here is an enlistment poster to world war i which has destroyed this, and it is an eight with drooling ape, black with a german world war i helmet on, with a club in one hand and says culture, and a white topless woman in his arms. and then if you go and you look

at the anti-japanese posters, it's the same poster, only it's yellow instead of black. so when it comes -- is a very good illustration of the way we construct raise your we construct a racial category. you want to dehumanize these people you make them as you're doing if you're trying to appeal to white americans you make the nonwhite. and then it's not just of course the racial difference, but the associations, the association with brutality, the association with last to women, you know, right out of mississippi a few years ago. do we still do it? i don't know. i know my muslim students and friends are afraid that we are still doing it. and that is present intensification for any reason

of the so-called war on terrorism, the so-called war on so-called terrorism, there is great fear in the community that what was done to the japanese in world war ii, et cetera, will be done to them, that they will be put under surveillance. and is not subject to the grams, and they can come if you say what's the racial difference, if you're going to divide people up according to race, the convocation -- they are caucasian, so what. so certainly one of the vicious byproducts of four is this tendency to great internal enemies and to do what i talk in the book, i described in the book as campaigns of national purification. ..

>> the answer was, we're a family. and, you know, the famous, the famous story -- well, anyway, i won't go into it all. but the literature around the civil war pro-patriotic literature around the civil war constantly used the metaphor of america as a family. what a time to think of america as a family when half the country was trying to leave. and were they thought of as errant brothers or sisters or wanted to go have a house of

their own in some other city? no. they were thought of as rapists of the mother, actually. they were thought of attacking mother america. but then if you look at world war i and, you see, that's where we got 100% americanism and the idea that america's, that we're one big ethnic group. but again, it's a reaction formation. it's what the psychologists call a reaction formation. because what had happened right before world war i was the greatest increase in ethnic and racial diversity that any country in the world probably had ever seen in such a short period of time. the enormous immigration from eastern europe, southern europe, asia, some latin america also, but especially the european immigrations that had people saying, good lord, what is it to be an american? and that's exactly the point at which the war comes, and we say

we're all american, we're all one ethnic group. what? and how do you define that? what does it mean, then, to be an ethnic, to be an american? we all, i don't know, maybe believed some of the same things or we all -- it's what, you know, there's this wonderful book about imagined communities that some of you may know, benedict anderson's book. and benedict anderson talks about modern states. our imagined communities in the sense that they represent a kind of fantasy of unity which tries to bring about, tries to realize itself in practice. so it's not just a fantasy, it tries to realize itself in practice. but especially when it's first announced, it's a fantasy. then you get world war ii, and then you have the fantasy of the classless society. i mean, that -- the country had just gone through something very

close to a revolution in the mid '30s, but now world war ii comes, and we have the posters -- look at the world war ii posters next chance you get, i've got a couple of them in the book, of the happy workers and everybody's working together, no bosses, no workers, we're all the same. we're all americans. we're a classless society. and the most recent version of this, i think, i shudder to say but i think it's true is that in response to the war on terrorism and its religious orientation, the religious orientation of some of the terrorists, we have samuel huntington's clash of civilizations. you know, huntington defined civilization as, in terms of religious values. he even calls china confucian which is pretty weird, but that's how he's defining, he's seeing civilizations clash on the basis of their religious or

quasireligious values. and if that's true, then american patriotism means is religious too. but since it -- and if it is religious, what we're likely to hear more and more is that it's the western religion, it's the religion of human rights, it's the religion of women's rights. you know, it's the religion of democracy, it's the religion of free choice in religion, it's the religion of, you know, all of that. but dished up as a kind of spiritual unification. and again, it seems to me, that comes along just in time to paper over or try by magic kind of to do away with deepening divisions in our own society among people con confessing

different values and different religious beliefs. so does this american religion which is being contrasted with the muslim religion, does that mean praying in schools or not? does that mean abortion or not? does that mean you have to believe in god to get elected to public office or not? etc. all of those divisions that are so deep among us now are kind of washed away in a general, imagined community based on a unity of religious values. all right? so, and, of course, the problem is that the people who don't, the people who don't, aren't included in that community are exploited. so we have campaigns of national purification to find and convert or stamp out the dissenters when

this happens. that's one of the reasons i think war on terrorism is so scary, because god forbid if we get attacked again, if almost anything happens and it seems almost inevitable that something will, one can see the fervor, you know, aroused, fervor aroused to, basically, turn the war on terror into a war on islam. and to prepare to resist that is something i think we have to do now. don't let the war on terror turn into a war on islam. i think we are out of time. well, identify enjoyed it very much. -- i've enjoyed it very much. i'll stick around afterwards, and we can talk afterwards. thank you very much. [applause]

>> this event was hosted by the cambridge public library in cambridge, massachusetts. and to find out more visit cambridge ma.gov/cpl.aspx. >> every weekend booktv brings you 48 hours of history, biography and public affairs. here's a portion of one of our programs.th >> why are white people called caucasian? have any of you asked yourself that? do you know why? no. and this was when -- well, it's still happening. the russians and the check in -e cher yangs were having troubles, so why are white americansme called czech yangs?

the answer took me to germany in the 18th century. now, the idea of race was invented in in the 18th century. it doesn't go back to antiquity. theree 18 were not white peopled antiquity. but since so many people thought that, i thought i should addresn it. so my book actually starts with the greeks and the romans. and their commentary on the people who became europeans. and what the greeks and the romans discovered were peopleop who lived in various ways. the greeks talked about what we call culture and for the romans who ward in various ways because the romans were imperialists and were very interested in who was a good fighter and who couldri help and who had to be vanquished.ld h i followed this jr. man idea --

german idea into the united states via madam destyle who was a french intellectual and thomas carlisle who was a british intellectual and ralph waldo emerson. so i spent a long time withel ralph waldo emerson who was thed kind of a genius of 19th century white race theory. ralph waldo emerson didn't have a great deal to say about black people, but he had a lot to says about white people. now, in the 19th century the idea prevailed that there were many white races. so there were people who were considered white, no one can question their whiteness. very clearly, the irish were white.ir very clearly, people descended from english people or scottish

people were white or german people. but they belonged to different races. they were white, but they belonged to different races. so, for instance, the irishthe catholics were thought to belong to the celtic race. and people descended from english people were thought to belong to the sax son race.ed f and the saxon race, and the saxons were better than the celts. it was not until the middle ofhe the 20th century which many of us remember vividly that the idea of one big white race came into being in which everybody was, who was white was the same as everybody else.as and it's not be an accident that that happened through politics.s it happened through the national mobilization of the great depression, the second world war

and the federal policies craftel after the second world war. so up one big white race is an a based in politics. >> be 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. >> marc aronson and marina budhos examine the impact of sugar on world history. they recount the role it played in the industrial revolution. during this event they speak to a group of students at the brooklyn public library in brooklyn, new york. >> well, the important thing today is in be about an hour we're going to cover several thousand years of world history and touch every part of the planet. you ready to roll? you ready to go on the journey?

and this is a journey that as we touch all these places did actually start from a family -- two family stories. so if we can look at the world map, marina and i were in jerusalem in israel visiting with my family, and i learned, i asked about story of one of my aunts, a mysterious aunt of mine, a non-jewish woman who had married into our jewish family. and i wondered about her, what's the story about her? it turned out that her grandfather had been a serf in russia. do any of you remember what a serf is? hold on, you in the back row, could you hand this to him and -- >> i think it was a slave? >> a serf was very much like a

slave. he was a person or a woman who could be bought and sold with the land. so my aunt's grandfather was a serf, but he had invented a process for working with beet sugar that was so useful, he became so rich he bought his freedom. when we learned about that, we suddenly learned about a connection to marina's family. >> so i had always known about my family's connection to sugar because my great grandparents traveled from india across to guyana which is in south america, but it's considered part of the caribbean. and they came o to cut, to work on sugar plantations. so part of what fascinated us was what is this substance where someone in his family all the

way in russia, a serf, and someone in my family looking to get a better life over here in india and then over to the caribbean, what is this substance that could effect people from such different parts of the worldsome. >> and before we traced that out, we want to ask you a question. how many of you think you might have sugar somewhere in your family background? so that's one, two, three -- oh, man, yes! yes. >> all right. let's -- what i'm going to do, i just want to hear from a couple of you where your family might have been from, okay? >> well, i think my family might have been in the caribbean -- >> caribbean, okay. very good. >> absolutely. >> okay. >> i feel my, i feel my family was either in in the caribbean or in europe. >> very good. >> okay, okay.

>> i think my family was either in the caribbean or europe. >> okay. very good. anybody else here? >> actually, i know that my family was from the caribbean, and that's where i get it from. >> so if you have the caribbean in your background, you definitely have sugar in your background. but we believed that many more people have sugar in their background than they know. and we're about to take you, as i say, spinning around the world. and is subtitle of our book is "a story of magic, spice, slavery, freedom and science." and let's start out with magic. why might we relate sugar to magic? well, sugarcane if we go back to the world map originally was very first, you know, off at the edge on the far edge, we know

that it was first grown in new guinea. and it was, they grew sugarcane. have any of you seen sugarcane before? >> okay, good. >> have any of you ever tasted sugarcane? >> all no. >> all right, all right. we do know that sugarcane was first grown in new guinea, and then it was brought up to india. and the reason we know that is there are prayers to the goddess durga where you would burn various offerings to the goddess. and one of the offerings that you burned was sugarcane. and we know that the original word in the ancient indian language of sanskrit for sugar was that which brings sweetness to the people. but at a certain point the name for this substance changed, and the new name for it was with

shakara which means gravel. can anybody guess why you might use a word that means gravel for sugarcane? for sugar? this gentleman. >> you might use gravel because when you put it in your hand, it kind of like -- it came out like sand, and sand is like gravel. >> you're exactly right. originally, they had cane, but they had learned how to make cane into sugar. and this is one of the crucial things. sugar granules do not exist in nature. what exists in nature is the cane. we had to learn how to turn the cane into those little pieces of sugar. and we'll get to that. but before we get to that, the question is how did knowledge of sugarcane spread? how did people learn about this

plant growing in new guinea, this substance used in religion in india? does anyone remember who might have brought knowledge of sugar across -- that background there is great. i think the second guy there hasn't spoken yet. >> christopher columbus -- >> no, you're ahead of us, buddy. ful you're ahead. we're way back. >> i think it's the, it spread because it went across the world, and i think china had it? >> yeah, but before china gets it there's someone who brings -- there's a woman here on the end, marine ma. marina. p. >> i think it was, i think it was the slaves. that's later. we're way back. we're in b.c., guys. we're way, way back. >> the australians? >> nope, no australians. >> the greeks?

>> yes. alexander the great. if any of you remember the story, alexander the great is conquering afrom dprees. he's -- from greece. he's conquering across iran. he's conquering -- he gets to the edge of india, and his troops say, i won't go any further. i've gone as far as i'm going to go. but alexander is conquering, he has this hunger to know. alexander can never know enough. so he sends his friend in a boat saying go explore india, find out stuff for me. and his friend comes back and talks about the reed that gives honey though there are no bees. now, why would you describe sugarcane as the reed that gives honey though there are no bees? >> because it was sweetsome. --

sweet? >> yes. and why else? you'll get a chance. >> because the honey, bees usually produce the honey and with sugarcane they didn't need bees. >> right. because what they knew -- if before people knew about sugarcane, how might they have sweetened their food? what ways might people have used to sweeten their foods? >> they would use mashed fruits and honey and sap from a maple tree? >> very good. you all may remember that in north america there were no bees, north and south america. they didn't have honey. so what they had was maple syrup, they had the agaf i have cactus, and in the rest of the world they had honey. so we've had sugar used in magical ceremonies, we've had sugar now is spreading, people are starting to learn about it -- >> but one thing we want to

mention when you say that they used, let's say, honey or fruit is sugar or sweetness at this time is not the way we think about it where you're going to have a chocolate bar or a cookie. it is just a taste. it is a spice. it is something you use in your meal to give it one of the flavors, okay? let's think there's a meal you just had where you used sweetness as part of the meal. what big meal did everybody have just recently? >> breakfast? >> okay. [laughter] think of a holiday. >> thanksgiving. >> thanksgiving. >> typical thanksgiving plate, you might have meat next to sweet, can bear with ris are -- cranberries are relatively sweet. you're using sweetness there as part of your main meal.

it's not -- maybe you had pecan pie or sweet potato pie later, but also on your plate sweetnd was a spice. >> so this is sweet withness, now, as a spice. sweetness, now, as a spice. >> and when sweetness was a spice, do you think sugar was easy to get or hard to get? >> hard. >> how many say easy? how many say hard? is you're right. >> so when it is as a spice, it is what we call a luxury item. it's not something that you can just go to the corner store and get a bag of. it's something that will cost you a lot of money. it's very special. you just use a little bit of it. >> and we know that the place that really caused the growth of knowledge of sugar is this wonderful, mysterious school. it was a school in what is now iran.

it was the first university, the first medical college where doctors trained while they healed patients. it had an observatory of the heavens. and here to this day on the palace of justice in tehran there is a sculpture of hasra the just who was the king in iran in the period when this academy was the world's center of knowledge. so people were coming from india, from greece, there were christians there and jews and persians all sharing knowledge about the world and sharing, in particular, knowledge of sugar. sugar was also considered a medicine. they actually gave sugar to people o to try to heal -- to try to heal some of their ills although they noticed that it wasn't too good for your teeth. the key next step comes in the

600s and 700s a.d.. can anyone remember what the huge change in the desperate of knowledge -- in the spread of knowledge, the spread of information that came in the 600s and 700s a.d.? the big, the new religion that was spreading all over the world? >> christians. >> no, we had the christians already. yes, sir, in the back row. >> hinduism? >> no, hinduism existed already. uh -- >> islamsome. >> islam. islam comes to the fore in be the 600s, and as the islam spreads across iran and spreads down -- crash.

into china into russia into central asia into the middle east into europe, islam has a common language that, of scholarship which is arabic and now they are spreading knowledge of sugar everywhere anyone speaks arabic. they can now learn how to use this new substance. one way they used sugar is to make beautiful sculptures. see these look like trees? these were entirely built out of sugar. so what they would do is they would have these big celebrations where a ruler to show what a wonderful, powerful, generous ruler he was would commission these huge sculptures that were made out of sugar. and sometimes there were also -- have any of you ever had mars

pan, a mixture of sugar and almonds. and they would also make these sculptures out of the mixture of sugar and almonds. can you -- while arabic is spreading, spreading knowledge, anybody remember what we call numbers that we write? what do we call numbers, 0, 1, 2, 3, the way we write them. what do we call that kind of number? uh -- >> counting numbersesome. >> counting numbers or there's another name for that kind of number. uh -- >> numeral? >> or what's the word that comes just before numeral? >> roman. >> no. >> digits? >> no. >> arabic? >> yes! we call them arabic numerals because the arabs brought the knowledge of how, instead of using remember roman numerals x,

i, z, all this complicated stuff, and the area wraps didn't have -- arabs didn't have zero. they brought knowledge of accounting numbers all throughout the world. but was there any part of the world that didn't -- can you think of a part of the world near the middle east, near africa, near asia that doesn't speak arabic at this time? we're now talking about 1100, 1000 a.d.. where is there a place where they don't speak arabic? >> turkey? >> okay. what's another possibility? >> china? >> be -- china, a possibility. where's a big place that they're not speaking arabic? >> pakistan? >> uh -- >> europe. >> yes! you got it. as the arabs are spreading knowledge, spreading numbers,

spreading information about sugar all over the world, europe is going in the opposite direction. europe is shutting down, blocking out saying, we don't want any of what you've got. so europe is withdrawing, pulling -- >> [inaudible] >> what? >> south america? >> we ain't there yet. in europe, however, they still like spices. and, in fact, if you are having a feast, you might have boar's head. this is an actual -- we've now used a medieval recipe to reconstruct the head of -- why is it green? because they were painted with, like, mashed up parsley or something because they wanted to have just like the arabs made these giant things out of sugar, in medieval europe you wanted to show you were rich by using, making something elaborate. making this and by ug