expired driver's license and roar through the streets of greensboro and other parts of north carolina. maybe he saw too much of "the dukes of hazzard." he would crash. one time two women were talking when their cars smashed. their injuries are so severe they sue him. i found a copy of the lawsuit. their last name, by the way is christian. the lawsuit is called christian vs. professor of mahamed. they win. the injuries were severe. he never pays. he dodges the sheriff, flouts the law, but i talked to the

christian women's attorney, steven jay tig, and he remembers him busting into the office with a translater to lecture him about the iran-iraq war and israel turns out to be an important point in the radicalization more so than i would have thought. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. we asked, what are you reading this summer? this is what you had to say. ♪

>> now carrie pitzulo argues over the years "playboy" magazine advanced the cause of women's rights more than people realize. it's a little over 45 minutes. >> thanks very much. it's such a pleasure to be here. [applause] thank you. this is a fantastic book, a fascinating topic, and a really entertaining read, so i'll leave time for questions at the end, but my first question is just what led you to focus your

ph.d. dissertation on playboy? it's a fascinating topic, but it's not obvious how you would choose it, so what led you to the topic? >> it was not obvious to me certainly. i've been surprised not only by my own conclusions, but the fact i came to focus on this topic. i'd always been fascinated with the 1950s and in particular popular culture. some of my early grad school research was on film in the 1950s and then i read "the hearts of men," and in the book she talks about the way masculinity was changing after world war ii, and there's a chapter on playboy. how did this sexually explicit magazine, some people consider pore pornography, i don't, but what some consider pornography, how did that become mainstream in what was a conservative culture? that was my initial question, and it started out as a paper in a graduate seminar, and it just

grew from there because i realized there was so much research potential in this topic. >> yeah. this is probably something ahead a little bit, but because you just touched on it, so can you just say why you don't consider this is pornography and what definition you use of pornography, and there's a bunch out there from feminist scholars, but where do you distinguish? >> at the time i started out thinking that playboy was pornography, but i was not sure of myself, even in the early understanding. as far as the definition, i think it's something much more explicit. i think pornography is really trying to test the boundaries of explicit sexual portrayal, and hugh hehefner was not wanting to cross the line, and have a sexy

magazine, but still be classy. he stayed far from that line, and certainly compared to many of the magazines surrounding playboy in the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s, they were much more explicit. it was a sexy consumer magazine and not pornography at all. >> is that true in the 50s, could you talk about playboy as presenting a sort of a positive lease view of post world war ii images of women. it seemed from my reading of the book that you were viewing playboy as challenging and really pushing, at least in the 1950s, but in what ways was it maybe not? i mean, were there other magazines out there already more sexually explicit so they were challenging women in a different way? >> yeah, a lot of the sexually explicit magazines that existed at the time were much seedier than playboy ever was, and the

portrayals of women in some of those sexual magazines were dirtier if i might use that word, portraying women as wanton or maybe whores, and that's something hugh hefner tried to stay away from. i think that's something that hugh hefner was in that category as well more in the line with the way "esquire" magazine was in the 1930s and 1940s. >> you talk about how hugh looked up to "esquire" in those day, and he took cues from them at some point. >> i think he did look at it as a model and copied what he saw in "esquire" because he was a real fan of that growing up, and

he worked for them briefly, and he was disappointed in the way they had let go in the early 50s of some of the sexual emphasis that made it popular in the 30s and 40s, and he wanted to redo that in the 1950s. >> uh-huh. can you talk more -- i mean, one of the main themes from the book is this sympathetic take on hugh hefner's playboys vision and effect on women's sexuality, and i'm particularly interested in you view the center folds in particular as presenting women more as sexual agents and objects and maybe that is the real distinction from the other explicit men's magazines out there at the time. can you say more about where you see that sexual agency coming from? particularly in the center folds, but then more throughout the magazine as well. >> uh-huh. my argument about the playmates is very much situated in the 50s

and early 60s in that pre-feminist culture, before women were truly -- well, if we can use that word, truly sexually liberated relatively compared to the early post-war years. as i started research in the magazine and another surprise to me was that the portrayal of the playmates, i think, was sympathetic. hugh hefner was trying to say the girl next door is sexy, certainly sexually available, and there's nothing wrong with that even though she's single, even though she is living at home with her parents. what i'm arguing is that in the 1950s, there was not a lot of mainstream popular culture making that argument about single womanhood that it was okay to be sexual and celebrate their sexuality, and a big part in the way that playboy did that was there were articles and, you know, descriptions of the women

accompanying the center fold pictures, and granted these stories may have been made up, but there were little articles describing what women did in their spare time, what their hopes and dreams were, did they go to college, you know, what cookies they liked to bake, and there were photographs that accompanied the essays, and in the layouts, it shows the playmates fully dressed at that point eating with their parents or grocery shopping. what i say these accompanying photos and essays said is this girl's parents don't judge her for being actively sexual, and her own parents don't judge her for being a sexual being, why should you? why should american popular culture, and so i think in that way playboy was fairly subversive in the 1950s.

that changes with the women's movement and the culture allows american women more active sexuality, but in the 50s that's subversive. >> it's interesting you describe the articles that accompany the center folds. it's still creating a fantasy for men, a fantasy about as you talk about in the book the beautiful and sexually available girl next door, and it's a very, i think, tintlating fantasy and if you were to undress her is this incredible center fold, but i can see -- so i r -- it's an interesting fantasy because i see the argument it's humanizing the women to some degree. it's presenting them in a broader view, but i can see why it's a very effective fantasy. >> right. >> that playboy was marketing, that is, it was good business for them. >> right. >> because it was saying the

playboy cementer folds, the bunnies are sort of everywhere. >> right. >> which, you know, in some ways is subversive, but you can also see the 197 # 0s feminist critique of that which is men are looking around and viewing us all as bunnies and what we look like with the bunny tales on, but it's a very savvy on hefner's business models using not professionals and they deliberately used not well-known models and women and most were just people who were not famous. >> right. >> how did they find the bulk of these women? they sent in pictures, but where did most come from? >> a lot were submitted by photographers, so photographers who did cheesecake photography or whatever, advertising, a lot of them submitted women's photos

for consideration, and -- >> most of them maybe were struggling models tell, not well-known the women? >> absolutely, absolutely. some of them supposedly were found grocery shopping if a photographer passed by a woman he thought was particularly beautiful, but a lot of them had modeled before they appeared in playboy, they just didn't appear in any well-known venue, and they didn't appear nude before playboy because hugh hefner did not want to promote anyone that appeared nude anywhere else, and they were not allowed to pose naked again for two years after playboy. >> that's fascinating that playboy was providing this glimmer, this kind of view into these women, but they were special, and you couldn't get the view of them anywhere else. it does play into the whole ma donna think, and they were good girls, may have liked sex, and

they were still good, but they just posed for playboy, and it plays into quite a brilliant marketing strategy. >> right. >> yeah, so, you know, they are innocent for the men to take home to their own families. >> exactly. >> it also distinguishes playboy from other magazines. you do not see these particular women everywhere. >> right. >> it's a cut above which is very interesting. it's also interesting when you talked about that several of the women in the most popular center folds worked at playboy. >> right. >> which is really interesting. did you talk to the women about how they felt being approached, you know, if you're the receptionist in a particular office? i guess if you work at playboy, you're comfortable with what the magazine was doing, but it's interesting that some of the people -- and they kept their jobs; right? they didn't be center folds and then change careers. in the 1950s we didn't have reality tv stars so they didn't go into a new celebrity

profession, but did you get to talk to any of those women? >> i did. they very much seem to be just normal, average women who happen to find themselves working at playboy. some of them were dating hugh hefner when they were the reacceptist or in the copy editing department or whatever, and some tell stories, joist, for instance, who still works at the playboy mansion as in 2006 when i interviewed her. she was dating hef, as he's known, dating him and working at playboy and didn't think of it as any big deal. she didn't think of herself as particularly rebellious, but she said she also didn't consider herself very constrained by, you know, the standards of the day. she and a number of the playmates i interviewed said that the only thing they were

nervous about was their fathers. you know, what might their decide think about -- dads think about them in playboy. in the case of joyce, her dad okayed her appearance in playboy once he met hugh because he put her parents so at ease. the women didn't think of themselves as, you know, anything other than the girl next door. >> yeah. >> one of the women said i happened to have a job that was different than most girls next door. >> yeah, and it didn't change their lives; right? >> absolutely not. another woman, deloris, she didn't know her picture appeared in playboy for 25 years. >> her son found it; right? how did she not know? >> she was a model, and she had posed nude in the 1950s. she -- when playboy was founded in 1953, the first several

center folds were not women who were posing for playboy. they were just sort of stock nude cheesecake photos from a local photography company, and hugh hefner bought the rights to the photos, and those were the first playmates, and this one particular woman, deloris, she had no idea where this stock cheesecake photo of her on a bearskin rug or something where that ever ended up, and many years later, her son looked at the 25th anniversary issue of the magazine in the 1970s and said, that's my mom. [laughter] and he told her, and she was pleased as punch, and she said she was a minor celebrity amongst her family and friends 25 years later. >> very funny. >> once the magazine was popular, they got their own models. >> right, right. the models were well bade by

playboy even in the early years. >> right, right. on average, the models were paid well, got promotional contracts, and the bunny waitresses, many of them said it was the best paying job they could find. >> that's right. you talk in the book a bit about playboy sort of pushing for liberal causes in a number of different ways, but one of them pushing the race line, the race barrier, and they have their first african-american bunny, and that's a center fold rather, thans very important to hugh, duh they push so far in talking endorsements. i think you said in the book they didn't give her the sort of, the endorsements they typically did to the other center folds. >> right. jennifer jackson, the first african-american playmate in 1965 because hefner couldn't

provide enough security. >> okay. the center folds would go to events and stuff. >> right, around the country, and playboy already had trouble with clubs in the south, and southern stands of segregation, and they didn't want that to be segregated, and according to jackson, that's why hefner couldn't give her the country. if he wanted to her to go to the south, she wouldn't be safe. >> right, you excerpted the letters published after jackson appeared, and it was a mix like a lot of controversial stuff playboy did, and they pushed a real range of letters. how integrated were the center folds after her? you think that made a statement clearly that the magazine cared about integration and believed in it. did they then continue with

integrated center folds or -- >> a little bit. there's only a handful of non-white play mates after jennifer jackson for the next ten years. >> uh-huh. >> i want to say it's four or five or six, so not much. the standard still remained a white playmate, and increasingly blond playmate because that was hugh hefner's personal preference. >> as we can see from his wives. he has married brunettes, hasn't he? >> not as wives. he's on his third engagement now. his first wife, milly, i don't know if she was blond or not, -- >> maybe one 20 years ago. >> i don't know that she was a blond, but they are pretty much all blond. that's definitely his proarches. >> okay. well, one of the other things i found interesting in the book was this contrast between playboys sort of pushing men to kind of liberate themselves from

traditional do best -- domesticity and not get married early, but focusing on pursuits. i had no idea there were recipes and home decorating tips and pushing men to be self-conscious about their appearance and in the same way women were pushed to be. >> right. >> there's this really interesting mix between the creation of in a way, i mean, you get this in the book, a new alpha male who is more feminine. i mean, did that surprise you before you started reading the magazine, this mix between you're a real man and have sex with these women, but yet, we're pushing you to be feminine. >> yeah, it was surprising. there's this real blurring in the magazine, gender blurring. women being celebrated in terms of their sexuality allowing

women to be more sexual in the ways men had been more sexual, ben then men being more domesticated but in a bachelor way, not domesticated in terms of marriage and fatherhood, but in terms of consumption, and really the magazine i discovered was much more a consumer lifestyle magazine than it ever was a sexy magazine, and hefner was always interested in sexual liberation. he talked and still talks to this toy about what he considers the repressive puritan heritage of america, and how this was a big problem for him, so the sexual aspect was always there, but his priority was really to make a consumer magazine. >> uh-huh. >> he has said that the girls were just there to sell the magazine, to make it more popular, and as far as consumerism, he was very

interested in getting men to be liberated in terms of their spending, to take advantage of the post war prosperity, and in that way, never was able to make the -- hefner was able to make the magazine so mainstream and make it a part of the post war culture because men were advised on shopping and fashion and told you just can't get away with two pairs of dress shoes, but you need a dozen and all of these accessories to take care of your shoes and keep them shined and kick rating and -- decorating and the creation of the bachelor pad, so it's a way in which i argue that men were really object mid in the magazine because it's emphasizing or putting pressure on men to look better and to make their surroundings more pleasing and modern. >> right. >> maybe in order to get a date and to appeal to women, but that

kind of advice is throughout the magazine, and the sexual aspect of it of this very traditionally feminine advice was just tacked in at the end. there's a long article about matching your tie with your belt and what colors and fabrics are in for this season, and at the end there's a little sentence about she'll be more likely to go to bed with you if you wear a certain material this season. really a way of femmeizing men, but avoiding sexuality. >> in the magazine, it was inspirational in the same way the women's magazines are, so women look at these fashion magazines and sort of think, oh, well, maybe if i wear that dress, i'll look like that

person; right? which we won't, but i thought what was interesting with hefner and playboy is he was consciously doing this as well that as the readers were in college or early 20s, and yet he was giving them aspirations and running stories about second homes in the hamptons, and you talk about in the early years he turns down a number of potential advertisers because they didn't fit the image. >> right. >> which i thought was really interested. can you say more about, you know, what this sort of particular class aspirations were for playboy, for their readers, and was it all about getting the higher end marketers, or was it more than that? >> i think it's about getting higher end marketers in order to create a middle class respectable magazine. consumer lifestyle guide, but also a magazine that's going to lift sexuality, commercial

sexuality out of the gutter an on to, you know, the coffee tables of average men across the country, so this was a very deliberate priority by hugh hefner. he wanted to make a sophisticated men's magazine. he always argued that men obviously heterosexual men are interested in these things, nice clothes, interested in jazz, and martinis and beautiful women. he said when he founded playboy, those things were separate. you can go to places for the sex and other places for the jazz, but you couldn't find those two things in one place. he wanted to join all of that, and he said there's nothing wrong with having these interests, so he had to make the magazine sophisticated in order to make the sexual component respectable, to keep it out of the gutter, and what i found in

the archive was very deliberate conversations amongst hefner and the editors and the directer about how to maintain this sophisticated kind of approach to the magazine, and in the early years, he refused to advertising from what he thought were, you know, kind of lower class, maybe seedier kinds of -- >> you name some in the book, what are -- >> anything that was overtly sexual. he didn't want anything to do with that so it had to be sex according to his definition and his portrayal, and also anything that he thought would make men feel -- would remind men in the ways in which they felt insecurity. >> you talk about how -- anything that made them feel like -- >> power. >> yes, less suave and sexy and feeling good while reading the

magazine. >> exactly, exactly. he didn't want men reminded about things that made them feel bad about themselves. he shunned advertising for years until the magazine was respectable enough to get spring made sheets as the first advertiser. in the archive documents and memos, there's a conversation about this where they talked about the fact, well, of course, we know the readers are not going to be able to afford this bachelor pad, but we want to inspire in them aspiration. >> right. >> to do that, so he was able to have a certain level of class status in his magazine and attract very high end advertisers. >> right, right. was the magazine able to turn a profit early? this is an unusual business judgment to turn advertisers away. was he able to profit quickly?

>> yea, yeah, the first issue was in december of 1953, and if i recall in the spring of 1955 they had to skip an issue because they couldn't keep up with production, so the magazine was expanding. they were getting a lot of circulation, so they skipped an issue to catch up and expand. >> wow, that's remarkable. did the readership stay constant, the demographics of the readers? it sounded like most of the readers were in their early 20s. did they drop off as they got older or stay on so the readership aged as playboy aged? >> the average reader by the end of the 50s was actually around 30, late 20s, around 30. "esquire" the main competitor was about 10 years old. playboy had a younger demographic by those years. in the late 60, there was a

sense in the company that the readership was getting older and not keeping up with the new youth culture, and that created another editorial process in the magazine because they constructed their identity of the 1950s buttoned up man. there were conversations about, well, now what do we do with young guys growing up with long hair? how do we remain relevant to them. >> right, the image didn't mitt the rail calls of the 60s at all. how did they adapt? >> in terms of consumption, i don't think that they did. >> uh-huh. >> the fashion features remained inspired by the standards hefner inspired in the 50s. sure, they changed a little bit. there's great memos from the archives where hefner talks about turtle necks at the new fashion statement. a turtle neck with a blazer, but

at the same time while the editors said we have to loosen up a bit, we have to start reaching the younger demographic in terms of consumption, hefner this class standard that i've always had, but in another sense playboy remained very relevant because in the 60s, the magazine became very political so they introduced the interviews, talked really explicitly about contemporary issues of the day, the war in vat nawm, civil rights, and things like that. the consumption, i'm not sure it was as relevant, but the politics kept them in the mainstream at that point. .. number of the feminist leaders in the '70s and wanted them to all appear sort of together in a discussion. and i was really interested that they refused because they didn't want to be together in the sense that they didn't want to be sort of paired off against each other. >> right. >> so they all said no.

but it was very interesting that may biofelt -- playboy felt they needed to take feminism seriously because they were a serious magazine. >> right. >> um, i think some people within the organization it sounded from your descriptions thought that playboy didn't end up maybe really taking on feminism, women's liberation, was meant at serious as they could have, perhaps, because hefner felt sort of threatened by the radical fringe as you sort of describe it. >> right. >> but the magazine itself really struggled, or the editors seemed to really struggle in their responsibility to bring feminism to readers, which was really interesting. >> right. well, it was such a political magazine at that point, and they were dealing with all of these other issues, there was no way they could ignore feminism. and many of the editors were young. >> uh-huh. >> and they described himselfs, the various editors and staff members that i spoke to from the late '60s and early '70s,

they described the majority of the staff as either liberal or radical in their political views. >> right. so a real tension for the magazine because they're a liberal, progressive magazine, and then here's feminism, and they should all be feminists. and in some ways they are. >> right. >> but only to a point because they're certainly not getting rid of the centerfolds or sort of con ceding that those might be undermining women's ability to be taken seriously as actors and in society more generally. so it is an interesting kind of struggle. and you can kind of sense it from the interpretations, you give us some memos or letters that hefner wrote his own kind of internal struggle. >> right. >> did you get to talk with him about that, or did you kind of get a fuller sense from the archives about his own reaction to the feminist movement? >> yeah. i was able to talk with him. i found these amazing memos. hefner had isolated himself in his chicago mansion for many years in the 1960, went through a fairly eccentric phase even for him. [laughter]

and so he didn't go into the office. so all of his work and communication with his staff members was done on memos, which is a treasure for a researcher. >> uh-huh, right. >> with to be able to find all those memos. and the magazine had by that time, by '69 or '70 when it started really thinking about addressing the women's movement had already been talking about issues relevant to women, reproductive rightses and such. >> right. >> but hefner was hysterical about the radical feminist critique of playboy. and the way in which some radical feminists, what hefner called the superfeminists, were critiquing heterosexuality and beauty culture. and that's what he reacted to. part of the argument i make in the book is that he missed an opportunity to emphasize the ways in which he and his magazine wholeheartedly supported liberal feminism -- >> right. >> in favor of reacting to this

radical critique in a paranoid, hysterical way. um, and he talk about his views of radical feminism in these lengthy memos. and he asks his staff to come up with a piece on superfeminism. and to really rip it apart. he says we can tear down these women. and sort of reveal them for the hacks that they are. i'm paraphrasing, he didn't use that particular word. i think he called them kooks. [laughter] so there's this great debate amongst editors and staff members, male and female, over how playboy should treat feminism. and at the end of it they get this article that's very critical of feminism, very dismissive of feminism. the author, mort hunt, he says that, you know, women shouldn't

fly a plane when they're menstruating, and that just opened up i another round of controversy amongst the staff. because a lot of the staff members were really unhappy with the way the magazine ended up treating the movement. and hefner himself then reversed his initial views and said, you're right, i don't think this was the right way to go. we support so much of the feminist movement, that's what we should have emphasized. and so i was able to bring those documents to his attention when i interviewed in -- him in 2006, and he was really interested in looking at them. he said, whoa, i haven't seen these in 40 years. and i asked him, you know, you contradict yourself, you had actually a record of support for feminism, you know, why did you go this route? and, um, he said that, basically, to this day he refuses to acknowledge that there could be any legitimate critique of his magazine.

and he took it really personally. and a lot of his top editors did too, took the feminist attack on playboy very personally. they thought that they were allies, they thought that they were liberal allies of the movement, and they could not and still cannot wrap their minds around the fact that the magazine could be interpreted as anything other than an ally of women. and so he really stuck to his gun on that point. but at the same time he said, well, i guess i'm not the cheaf fist pig that i've been made out to be, you know? [laughter] i do have this record of support for women. it's that very fact that makes him unable to accept that some feminists can't be friends with him. >> right, right. you really get that ambivalence throughout the book, and an interesting sort of fork in the road as you were highlighting. e mean, the magazine could have just really embraced liberal feminism in its pages which it was doing in its editorial

staff, and instead they kind of highlighted or tried to tear down the radical fringe of feminism. >> right. >> and i think your take on it sounds exactly right, it was largely driven by sort of a personal hurt or insult. >> right, right. >> i want to make sure we leave some time for questions. i see we have got about ten minutes, okay. does anyone have any questions? such a great topic. yeah. >> sure. i teach classes on nonfiction books. i thought i ought to coffer some things on -- cover some things on gender issues now, and i began trying to read a recent postmodern, considered a postmodern, feminist book, and it was analyzing soap opera activity primarily, and it was a little hard for me to deal with, so i picked up a book, "is there anything good about men," that freud had written. and although it's not quite in the feminist genre, it covers

gender issues. i wondered if you'd have any suggestions for recent feminism kinds of things that would be more in the mainstream. >> in the terms of masculinity? is. >> well, no. in, in the modern feminist cause, perhaps. >> oh, um, yeah, there's a lot that's been out in the last 10 or 15 years in what's called third wave feminism. um, and really one of the founding books, and this is ten or 15 years old now, but sort of one of the founding books of third wave feminism is called "manifesta." i'm recalling the title, so that might be a good place to start in terms of the way in which feminism is now interpreted by a younger generation of women. >> hi, carrie. i have a question. i know you said your book focuses more on '70s and earlier readership of playboy.

i was wondering, have you looked into if anything has changed with "the girls next door" show on tv f that brought in the readership of playboy to other, just women in general? i'm curious if they were buying playboy a little more, because i know i did when i started watching the show. i kind of realized, well, these girls don't all come from broken homes. that's what i grew up thinking, these girls didn't have families, but on the show, you know, they were happy girls with happy families, and their families supported them, you know, displaying their bodies in playboy. so i'm wondering if readership changed recently with that show, if you'd looked into that at all. >> um, i'm not aware that the readership of playboy has changed. and as far as i know, it certainly hasn't expanded. because of "the girls next door." playboy, as most mainstream magazines are, has been struggling over the last 10 or

20 years with the rise of the internet. for various reasons, whether it's internet porn or people just reading, getting their information on the internet as opposed to paper magazines. and certainly the consumers of the "the girl next door" and playboy's brand, the t-shirts, the bunny logo t-shirts and purses and jewelry and such are young women. i'm not aware that many of those women have now started reading the magazine. i think that today there are sort of two versions of playboy's existence. there's the magazine which i think still has a fairly traditional readership. um, if i recall and i could be wrong about this, i think its readership each month, circulation is about two million now down from a high of seven million in the early '70s. so it sort of still has its little niche market, but it's experienced this resurgence in the last five years or so as a

brand. as a consumer brand. and "the girl next door" is very much responsible for this. so young women, many young women are consuming the playboy brand but not necessarily reading the magazine system and playboy clubs are now opening around the world again, the new one in this london opened any day now or in the last few days, actually. and i, this is totally anecdotal, i asked some of my students, girls in my class what they think about playboy, and they said, oh, i love "the girls next door." i've never read the magazine. i don't care about the magazine, but "the girls next door," i love that show. i have a playboy purse, and i said, why, what does it mean to you? and they said, it looks like those girls are having so much fun. they're dating this old guy, whatever, but they're always going to parties and meeting

celebrities, and everything they wear is pink. [laughter] and it's just pretty, and their bedroom is pink and fluffy, and it looks like they're having a great time. and so at least with a handful of girls in georgia, that's apparently what playboy means to them today. and so i think that's really where the brand has taken hold. and i, i'm not aware that there's a big crossover to magazine readership. >> it's funny, though, it's gone from the fantasy for men to the fantasy for young women, right? of a pretty pink world. >> exactly. exactly. it's nonthreatening, just some fun. you know, i think that for these young women having this elderly boyfriend -- >> well, he's probably not threatening, right? >> it's nonthreatening, it's just fun. [laughter] yeah, yeah. >> are there other questions from the audience? >> was there any moment during the war in vietnam when hefner became anti-war? >> oh, yes. the magazine was anti-war pretty

much throughout. >> like, from 1965 on? >> yeah. >> oh, really? >> they were one of the first mainstream magazines to come out against the war in vietnam. certainly one of the first mainstream magazines to come out in support of abortion rights in the mid '60s. so playboy was very liberal on all of those social issues of the day. >> what about his, you know, the competitors? i don't know when they started being published, like penthouse and so forth. >> right. >> it seems like the editorial voice of the magazine always was supercool and never got foresterred about -- flustered about anything, but i recall the publisher of penthouse using his fingers and saying, reciting these milestones of how he had photographically proceed today get more and more intimate in the to have my of women. i won't mention any examples. but did playboy, like, try to play catch up with this, or how

were they feeling about all of that? >> yeah. you talk about the very cool voice, the editorial voice of the magazine. well, in those years, late '60s and early '70s, the founder of penthouse who came to the u.s. from england in '69, if i recall, and then hustler appeared in '73 or '34. '74. much more explicit magazines. and the cool editorial voice behind the scene there was crisis amongst hefner and his editors. the late '60s and early '70s were a time for -- of crisis for playboy in a lot of ways. they're really being challenged by more explicit magazines like penthouse, in particular, and they're trying to keep up. and there's this great debate -- >> [inaudible] some kind of ethical dilemma? i wouldn't think that hefner would really have a big problem -- >> he did. >> really? >> he did, yeah. certainly, and, you know, i have

to say there's a difference between the type of very romantic sexuality that hefner wants to promote in his magazine and his personal life. because, clearly, his personal life was very libertine, very extravagant. but in the magazine even into the '70s, um, it's part of the reason why i end my book when i do, in '73, because the formula's really established, and he doesn't want to waiver from that formula by the early '70s. there's a great debate over how explicit playboy should become in order to keep up with its competitors. and the centerfold images became a little bit more explicit. they were actually called the pubic wars at the time. the revealing of the pubic area which was very tame. >> like four other stages, and i don't recall what they were. that was just the first stage. >> with right, right. but that's where playboy stayed. playboy went to that line to compete with penthouse, and it was hotly debated amongst the

staff and editors if they should even do that, if they should show pubic hair. and then hefner said, that's it, i'm not going further, i'm not doing this, i don't care if our circulation falls behind, this is not what playboy's about, and they stopped. >> and then they lost market share? >> what? , i'm sorry? >> and they lost market share at that point? >> well, yeah, yeah. and then by the mid '70s, for a variety of reasons, playboy readership started to go down. but the culture changed so much at that point, people didn't need to go to playboy for sex anymore. >> well, the other magazines also suffered. i don't know what the timing was, but hustler and penthouse haven't been doing well, probably have suffered even more long term than playboy. >> right, absolutely. >> did playboy really never push that line? i mean, you have some wonderful descriptions in the book of hefner basically sort of saying, oh, that's smut, you know? >> yeah. >> that's just dirty. >> yeah, absolutely. >> he really did seem to have a very clear, um, aesthetic line,

but it also sort of seemed to be a moral line that some things were just improper. >> right. right, right. >> he had a very clear vision of what was okay and what wasn't okay. >> yeah, he absolutely did. >> now, is he still retaining control over the centerfolds? even now? or has everything really been turned over to, i guess, christy and now new leadership after christy? >> right. she retired in the 2009. my understanding is that he still has the final say on everything. >> uh-huh. >> day-to-day stuff he's not involved in, but that he is still the end of the line for the big decisions in the magazine. >> uh-huh. were there there any significant changes under christy, or did she really -- >> she really wanted to start to appeal to women, so in the '80s and '90s the magazine magazine -- the company, not so much the magazine changing, but the company got involved in core

video -- soft core video porn for heterosexual couples. so christy wanted to appeal to women in that way. the magazine did make more of an attempt to appeal to women in the '90s with more celebrity centerfolds. they thought women would like to see certain celebrities. and then a major change not so much necessarily appealing to women, but after 2000, 2001 the magazine -- the company finally got involved in hard core video porn because they needed to make money. and this was, again, a huge, huge decision for hugh hefner and christy because this was something the magazine had, the company had always stayed away from. >> has the hard core porn been important for the business success since the magazine readership has gone down so much? >> that and the branding, which is huge. yeah. >> right. do we have time for any more? or are we out of time? >> can i ask one more here? >> okay, one more. >> okay. it seems like hugh hefner is

teflon. recently "time" magazine had a pig on the cover about men's behavior, and how is this guy able to live at ground zero of, you know, sexual activity and yet we never hear anything untoward about him? not that i'm a real student of him, but -- [laughter] it never seems to get in the newspapers or anything. >> um, we did hear a lot of criticism of hefner and playboy in the '70s and '80s from the feminists that we talked about, certain aspects of the feminist movement and be particularly as an anti-porn feminist movement developed in the late '70s -- >> [inaudible] it's nothing really perm, it's all about the editorial stance of the magazine. >> right. um, he hasn't gotten himself in a lot of trouble. >> even with all those divorces, he hasn't -- >> he's had two divorces. he's only been married twice.

he's engaged now. so, no, not a messy divorce. his first wife who he married just before the founding of playboy, um, she remained friends with him, she was even helping out with the company until her death many years ago. his second wife lived next door with his second round of children. they had a little bit of trouble over some money or something recently. but otherwise, he stays friends with people. a lot of his old girlfriends still speak highly of him, are still friends with him, some of them still work for the company. i think he's just not gotten himself into trouble. he's never been into drugs. you know, we can say that he may be an eccentric person, you can talk about sexism and, you know, awe f i think all of that is valid, but i think he's legitimately a nice, generous person. >> i'm just a little skeptical. you know f it's too good to be true, it's not? [laughter]

>> yeah. i mean, he's not a saint, right? and there have been a few very seedy stories that have come out of the mansion over the years, certain playmates oding and things like that. but those stories are very few and far between. most people who know him say he's just a nice guy, and his biggest addiction other than blonds has been pepsi cola. literally. [laughter] >> that's a great note to end on. thanks so much,

>> that question was what are our chances, really, of surviving this shifting climate that's looming and that we are causing? and the only way i could think of to answer that question was to really go back to the scientific fundamentals, to go back to the process that created us and our planet, and, of course, look at the intersection between our species and this thing that we call planet earth. because it's at that intersection that the issue of sustainability arises. and i couldn't think of a better way really of starting to look at the issue than to go back to the work of that man there. that's charles darwin's tombstone in westminster abbey, the great kind of sacred house for all of the great men and women of the british people. um, it tells you something that

he was buried in the church in the great house, but nothing is said on his tombstone of his achievements. it's sort of pretty unique, actually, among all the monuments in the abbey. you wouldn't guess why he was there, obviously, what he had done and written about with the theory of evolution didn't, was not kindly looked upon by his own church. the reason i wanted to start with darwin was because he's the man who really explained to us how, what the process that made us and the process that made our earth. and his idea, his great idea was an extremely simple one. it was simply that in every generation there is variation between individuals and that some of those individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce than others and that over the vastness of time that

people were just becoming aware of, the history of the earth in the mid 19th century, that that must tell on those which shape the species as a whole, as he put it. so it was a very, very simple idea. but darwin, being a very wise man, i think, a very perceptive person, decided to sit on that idea for 20 years. and it was only when i went to darwin's house in kent that i really understood a little bit more about why he waited so long before he announced this fundamental idea that changed our view of the world. just outside his house he built a little thing that he called the sandwalk. and that's it there. it's actually a pebble walk. i don't know why he called it the sandwalk, but there you go. even great men can do odd things. and every day of his life at

down house he would walk for several hours around that sandwalk, and people have wondered why he did it, what was he thinking about, what was he doing as he walked around that race track, really? it's just a loop around the forest there. scientists have speculating that maybe he was perfecting his arguments or constructing in his head the beautiful paragraphs that -- and sentences that characterize this written work. but the testimony of these children suggests something very different. they left memoirs where they talked about what they knew of their father, and they would play in the forest there and often interrupt him as they were doing so. and he always seemed glad of the interruption. he'd sometimes join their games whether they were kicking a ball or whatever they were doing. and those were not the actions, one would say, of a man who was deeply engaged in complex and critical thought. i think what darwin was doing as

he wandered the sandwalk was met moreically fingering his worrying beads for the shape of civil society and over deep matters. i guess at base what he was worried about was that if he destroyed faith by showing that we were not the unique creation of a loving and caring god, but instead we're the result of an amoral and utterly cruel process, that by destroying faith he might destroy hope and charity as well and have a very adverse impact upon his society. he may never have published his theory if it hadn't been for this man here. in 1858, 20 years after darwin first stumbled on the idea of how we and every other living thing on the planet was made, this man here, alfred russell

wallace, was working in indonesia. he was a man 20 years younger than darwin. he was a working class lad, self-made, went to the tropics to collect biological specimens. and while he was there on the island he had a ma lair y'all attack, and as a result of that attack as he was highly fevered, the idea came to him that perhaps species were created by exactly the same mechanism that darwin had chanced upon 20 years earlier. when he recovered enough from his malaria to write, he wrote a note to darwin in great excitement outlining his theory and asked darwin if he wouldn't mind transmitting it to one of the journals to be published in britain. when darwin received the letter, he was horrified. he said, you know, wallace couldn't have made a better summary of my work if he'd had my notes in front of him, and he

thought perhaps his whole life's work was about to be stolen by this upstart, this working class lad. as it was, he appealed to his friends, um, particularly those who looked after journal publications and so forth including charles lyle, the great geologist, and as a result of their intervention both pieces of work with co-published in july 1858, both darwin's and wallace's. and it is extraordinary how similar they are. um, the theory is presented in fullness and completeness in both accounts. but for all of that it was like a squibb going off in if british society. no one took any notice. in fact, the man who was in charge of publishing the journal, professor bell, who was an expert on the crus today shah wrote in his summer of 1858 that

there'd been no significant scientific discoveries published in the journal that year, nothing that would revolutionize the department of science that they bear upon. of course, he couldn't have been more wrong, and that was showed the following year in 1859 when darwin published his book on the origin of species. and then as darwin perhaps feared, um, with the theory unleashed upon his society, everything began to change. within five years herbert spencer had coined the term, "the survival of the fittest," and social darwinism had been born. darwin didn't really help his own cause in the subtitle he picked for the book which included the line, "on the preservation of favored races." and i can imagine going into a book shop in 1859, you know, as an average sort of englishman and picked up this book and on the preservation of favored races, i wouldn't have been thinking about worms who are