practice areas, corporate energy and environmental tax financial services, realistic litigation and intellectual property. the thank you. match. [applause] briefly, let me tell you about some of our other events coming up this evening. next week i will be interviewing mr. atco is part of the role. afterwards we will have just the norm in, brain being no, peter fellowes, and this kapoor. the following week -- the following week diane keaton. and just before thanksgiving, joan didion. followed right after thanksgiving was mary beard, josh ritter, leslie stays and steve earle. join our e-mail list and find out more and stay on top of what we are doing next season.

the spring season will open with to recall the analyst is a conversation. tom brokaw will sign books after a conversation. once again, if it is sure to thank her independent bookseller 192 books. [applause] the first 10 people who sign up after arafat tonight and become friends of the new york public library, obviously all of your friends of the new york public library, the support this evening more if you know what i mean, will get tom broke cause new book out for free. now, you all know who tom brokaw is. and for the last two years, i have asked the various guess i am by for a biography of

themselves written by themselves in seven words. a haiku of sorts. if you really want to be modern, which may be tom brokaw the net will talk about it to eat of sorts. and so, tom brokaw sent me the following seven words. he knows what an assignment is. he said, it curious? talkative. i'm grateful for the. impulsive, and patient, forget: my. tom brokaw. [applause] music not ♪

♪ ♪ >> that was for you. you love frank's not sure. >> i do. and i had mixed experiences with frank's a notch or obviously in my generation he was the voice and use larger than life in many ways i encountered along the way and not always puzzling because i was a reporter and he didn't like being in the news, and especially how he got himself into the news. so he would do something inappropriate and we would report it and then the next day his public relations person would come to see me. and he would say, you know, frank doesn't think you are aware that he is underwriting an orphanage in mexico are some good deed in. i said no, i did hear about that. it doesn't excuse the bar brawl or whatever.

and then through an odd set of circumstances, one evening in new york with a mutual friend, a legendary figure by the name of swifty lazare who is a agent. and swifty had invited me to dinner and it turns out he had also invited frank's wife and then frank was going to arrive later. my god, what is this going to be like? sinatra came, sat down and looked to me and said kid, i watch her every morning. i was doing the today show at the time. he said i've got tickets for my concert if you want to come. he turned on the charm and of course i was instantly seduced by all of that. because he could be -- you know, he didn't know which one is going to show. but when the good one showed up you is absolute wonderful. >> he went to the concert? >> i didn't go to the concert, but i have another story -- he made at nbc because we have the

best sound facilities. and the audio wizard who were at nbc in burbank came today because he knew i liked sinatra did stick around tonight. it's going to be about 2:00 in the morning, but shall want to hear this. he wrote juan carlos. i went to the soundstage when the back where no one could see me. frank came in at 2:00 in the morning and i thought the art is because he worked with the orchestra and the score and he worked with juan carlos. he was just all business. the model focused that he had in doing take after take after take. and i thought, that's who he is because he is so good at it. >> frank also in your story and a promise we won't talk about frank's not sure, but it strikes me in your story that you also mention he was the voice. and if there's one thing you are known for tremendously, it is

your own voice. >> yeah, it is. but it's widely imitated as well. no one does it better than me. [laughter] so i get picked up on a lot. and that's fine. it is a form of flattery. i can't sing a note. meredith brokaw brought music to our family. but i don't do it. >> i want to begin quite briefly by referencing the subtitle of your new book, "the time of our lives." the subtitle reads, "the time of our lives: a conversation about america". where we need to go to recapture the american dream. and when i read that sub title, i was rather struck by just how loaded the turns are.

and for someone who has been in this country for 30 years, i would like you to explain to me what it means, these tools, american dream. >> everyone has their own interpretation, but i suppose if there is a kind of a consensus, it is the american dream is that our children will have better lives than we will. but every succeeding generation has a little over better life in some fashion. it has gotten reduced to what i called a quantitative better life. and i think that's what we have to re-examine. how many houses come out minicars, how many jackets and toys can you have? that's not to be the american dream. what i try to do is turn the thinking is sent to the quality of life. let's make that the measure of the american dream. more tolerance in america. more opportunity in the work

place. reforming our education system so everyone has an equal opportunity to move themselves forward. to do something about our political culture so it doesn't seem walled off from the ordinary americans. i think that it's getting up the american dream. and that is a question that comes up as they say in the book, time and time again as they go across the country from people on main street, people in power. they are worried about whether their children will have what they have. and so i asked them to examine, what does that mean? what do you mean how do you have? because happiness can be achieved in a thousand different ways. but we have to have a continuing pride in who we are as well. that should be a part of it. >> and the work we capture is very important because in some ways he seeks is something that we've lost. >> well, i do think it has been lost to some degree. if you just look at the polling

in this country now, the confidence in our institutions are down to single digits in many instances. most people think the country is very much on the wrong track, not on the right track. they express overtly their anxiety about the future that their children will have as they look at the work place disappear. i once did a series on nbc nightly news about auto workers in america. and i picked five generations of them. i found a great grandfather who had worked in the original ford factory and he had been beaten up by the goons when they try to organize. his son caught the great wave of the 1950s, got big benefits, good salary, good retirement program, had a house in the upper peninsula of michigan, a big fishing boat. his son was outsourced all across the midwest, racing from ohio to indiana, today's other

alpine plants that were not part of the central forces done. what i said what are you going to do about the 10-year-old company said in in unison, computers. we've got to get them working on computers. but that is the transition. there is a time that he had a strong back and make it. hands and good work group come you could find a good job in america. we were the manufacturing capital of the world. that's no longer true. 40% of the american economy shuffling money and, creating new instruments. >> do you think that worry his parents for the next generation, for their children to do better than they did in their own kinds when they were productive is something that has always existed. you feel it is exacerbated? >> know, even during the worst days of the 60s, the greatest generation, as i call them, would often shake their heads about other kids were behaving. they said god, they are so

smart. they are so well-educated and they travel so easily. i can't believe the starting salary they get at a law firm or at ibm are one of the places. i used to take the temperature that generation a lot because i was covering the 60s allowed. even though they were not happy with their deportment, they could see whether they were the masters of the world. and the idea of their children could say i'm going to take a couple years off and travel the world and come back and start my career, whether they were starting businesses at a very early age, the boomers were. and doing inventive things. and their parents were looking at it with a sense of awe. not the parents are looking at their children with a sense of anxiety. and by the way, they look at them across the dinner table because they are moving back within, the kids are, in big numbers. they do it for a couple of reasons. one is economic. they can't get a job or afford

housing. the second as, as a member said to me, i trust my parents. they are my best friends in the best counseling going to get. by single corporations attempt to make that her mother. i'm not going to go rushing into that. >> her parents doing a good job of educating their children? >> yes, but educating them for what? that's the issue. i mean, i believe a society is always best served by a strong liberal arts undergirding. that in a modern economy, you also have do have specific skill sets to work in high-tech manufacturing. and therefore, there is a boom going on in america and community colleges because they are affordable and they are teaching young people practical skills to take to the were placed. and other young people look at their friends to go off to college and emerge as 10% of them do now, those who student

loans, 10% have debt of $40,000 when they get out of college. that is a big load to start life with. >> what you say reminds me so much of my own father when i went off to university just before i went off to university, both my parents from an old vienna, my father sat me down and said, you know, paul, just don't forget that the word university comes from the word universe. don't forget for one second that she might be going and studying literature and philosophy and law as it were back in those days, but right across the street is the medical school. go and look how they cut a peabody. go and look at what other people do. and i was reminded by this in part by this fabulous quotation you have of the former president of io, where you say -- it's

fantastic. you are not expected to know, but you are expected to wish to know. i'd love you to elaborate on that because i felt that was very inspiring. >> i waited for our giamatti's freshmen incoming speech every year. and then his baccalaureate speech. and then i approached him. i made it clear that i am ripping them off as fast as i can. it was real -- it was real alloyed within the best kind. and he is a very literary figure. he's a renaissance scholar and he would give wonderfully wise speeches to incoming freshmen and those who are leaving you know. it would also say to them if they did, i think that was a baccalaureate speech in which he said, do not become hostage to the orthodoxy of others as you leave here.

and at that point, we were going through the jerry falwell, pat robertson influence in american politics and the moral majority. and he found that tyrannical as a political egos. he was saying to the university, and he was threatened by the way for taking it on. if you seem to be university students, you know, use your mind to reason, to think, to be independent. we lasted far too early. we have in my judgment to few bird giamatti is. i also quotes john gardner, common cause at his own populist wisdom about how we should conduct ourselves in a civil and social society. >> do you feel he was saying that because in some way young people are not adventurous enough when they go into school? >> now, i think this is a pretty

adventurous generation now. i don't think they have the load stories they once did because they find it an instrument taken these days. they find it on the screen. you know, on how much they serve at to get back i switched to i don't know, but they are utterly with good reason a new type elegy. i have a line when i go to university campuses in which i say, i never expected in my lifetime certainly something as transformative as this is for communication research and commerce and for ways that we can't even now anticipate. online universities are exploding, for example. bill gates spends most of his evening and online academies of one kind or another reading great literature learning new things. and i say to them, but you are not going to reverse global warming by hitting backspace. you want to reduce global poverty by hitting delete.

i have seen it will do little good to wire the world if we shirk short-circuit our souls. >> do you -- you are worried of the day when someone will write a song called a tree is just a tree. >> as time goes by. i do want to hear that song. i also look at the audiences and see to the young people, no text message will ever replace a whispered i love you or holding hands on a first date. >> said the new technologies, while you see their value, but worries you about them as people are not thinking enough about their limitations? >> because i think humankind is advanced biotechnology that has wisdom in the hands that activate that technology and has

passion that they bring to their lives as well. it's an instrument. it is a tool. we have heads and hearts and they should drive that technology, not the other way around. that's what i believe. i also worry that a yield -- pardon me, a stanford law senior when i was out there doing work in silicon valley, i was sitting in the courtyard at stanford law school and was online in this young man came over to me. i'm very partial to stanford because i left a lot of tuition there for my daughter when she went there for four years. but he said to me a very pertinent question. he said mr. brokaw, you've written a lot about generations. what about my generation and the definition of demeaning friend? to know what that means? are we going to were going to lose it because we've made it a verb. we are frightening people now. that's a very relevant question. how do you measure friendship?

it ought not to be because you share a face but page or the tweet you or find you. >> also one of the things that your book speaks about is the notion that technology in some way also interrupts our courses thinking. and i think this will lead us quite nicely. >> i must say, it you really have to have discipline to go into technology. it is way too easy to go on google and just start surfing and searching for something, whether it has any meaning or not. someone has said to me to mature in my case. as a friend who is not technologically advanced at all and is quite disables those confined to his library. were trying to encourage him to get an ipaq. he said not many to be humorous, is that the old menus when they wake up in the middle of the nicer they can read "the new

york times" before the morning arrives. i said yes, that's it actually. i know it well. we haven't had a dialogue in this country. it doesn't mean we have to assemble somewhere to have the dialogue, but is with families, best use of this technology and what should be aware of. i will segue into saying what i say to audiences as well about the impact of the technology of journalism. not just on the forms of journalism, but how we get our news. there was a time a lot of you remember well. we've just got up in the morning and got the morning paper or went to the newsstand and picked off one of the many papers available in new york. at home in the evening, watch david brinkley or walter or a little later, tom danner peter. and maybe you caught the late evening news in our set. you're a couch potato. it was delivered to you. now you have to be a proactive

consumer. you have to go find the sources of the information, not just take it because it comes off the screen. you have to measure credibility and reliability of it over time. i know somebody in montana who comes to me quite wide-eyed on a regular basis and sister not going to believe what i saw the internet today. i said you're right. i'm not going to believe it. >> and yet there is a yearning. i sit in groups assembled such as this one come a yearning come together. you know, we need in some form or fashion, we need others. now you say we must return to our fundamental obligation. it is time to reenlist as citizens. when you and i spoke calmly repeated that term, reenlist as citizens. what do you mean? >> it's become my mantra for this time. and i just measure what we arrived to weekends to history

and immediate legacy we inherited. let me give you an easy example of that. and i say this and a lot of you heard me say at what they do like like at this point. i have been engaged in the two longest words in american history. that's an indisputable fact. iraq and afghanistan. a lot of famous in america paid a terrible price of people wounded physically and otherwise. they represent less than 1% of the american population. they are all volunteers are to come from middle-class and working-class families primarily. very few elite institutions or upper income families send someone off in uniform to fight for all of us. they are airing this terrible burden. nothing is asked of the rest of us. no additional taxes. we don't even have to think about it if we choose not to.

we can go through her allies. the war can be going out there almost as an abstract for us. that is not just unjust in my opinion. it is kind of immoral and a democratic society. so that is an example i use. we, the rest of us have to -- i have a title for a chapter called uncle sam needs us. we have to reenlist as citizens. this next year is going to be very important. an umpire to call and strikes. i don't know whether the republicans were when or democrats or even a third party candidate, but i do know when it will deter determined and find that people who get into the arena and pursue and encourage what they want for america. i said "meet the press" and repeated at recently. whatever you say about the tea

party and i can imagine any room like this was played by the rules. they got angry. they got organized. they've got to washington and state discipline. they are dominating the dialogue in the republican presidential debates because of that discipline. if you look at the polling, they don't represent a majority of americans. it's in fact quite a distinct minority. but because they say on message and use the instrumentation that's available to them, the tail wag in at this point and the republican party. if you're not happy about that anyway to counter or bring your own passions to the arena come you've got to reenlist as a citizen. >> in that same vein, you think that public service is so important. >> yeah, this comes not just renée. it comes from the ground up your people say why can't we have mandatory public service.

a lot of males will say of a certain age we should go back to the draft. the draft won't happen again. it's too politically toxic. the military doesn't like it. they like the motivated volunteers. but there is no reason why we can't elevate the idea of service that there's more than the sum of its parts. as a lot of good programs out there. teach for america, americorps. after being embedded with troops in afghanistan, on a couple of occasions, the 10th mountain division, i go into this remote clay villages, where i see these guys that i was with and the goggles and kevlar helmets and vests and humvees and a shakedown pickup trucks and in a way which they, we are here to win your hearts and minds. it didn't work. it didn't connect. and i thought there's got to be

a better way. we can't just have a military faith in america. by the way, i so admire these young warriors because they are well-trained to know what they are doing and they are frustrated because too much is enough to send. so i came back and read about this for the times actually. why can't we have a diplomatic social source for people who are civilians. that led me to believe that to a public service academies in america. six of them attached to land-grant schools, make a public-private, have the johnson followed medicine, john and your phone agriculture caterpillar fellow in construction. he spent three years getting a specialized training, then they are assigned both by accommodation of the government and private site or coalitions to their work abroad or in this country. at the end of three years of public service the corporation takes them and for two years to provide so to speak. they've got a chance to see

whether they want to keep them and whether young man or woman wants to stay there. it is not as well formed as a.to be because i was really trying to kick start a conversation. originally it was trying that out in south texas with some friends of mine, big businessmen. one of them come a very conservative guy. i didn't have the private piece about point. he said make it private public. >> and you're very interested in the partnership between public and private. you think it can work. >> yeah, it's a big trend in this country. mitch daniels is doing a lot. he's turning it over to private corporation. but on a smaller basis across the country, water districts are turned over and run more profitably and more efficiently. the state in which we live has 11,000 state age these. this is a system that was designed for political patronage

100 years ago. this is not necessary for us to have that any state agencies here. long island, as he drove across the county, each county has a different water district and district and set of and well-paid commissioners. >> would you do? >> out of consolidated a lot of education in america. it's very tough because people have attachments. they have pride in these institutions. and the system that is going to consolidate and change and reform that is a system be reformed -- rewarded by the way it exists now so they are not inclined to do it. >> we had on this very stage, malcolm gladwell when the cup for the founder of teach for america. and i think one of the most powerful parts of your book is precisely your worry really with the state of education in this country. and you have this note about being in korea been seeing

children congregating -- very young children. >> and i was 15 years ago. i was there during the olympics and we were doing the nightly news because of the time difference, very late at now, really early in the morning. and when it finished, it would be not yet dawn. and i looked out for the building where is doing it. i was on the rooftop. as a junior high courtyard below me. and at about 5:45, six clock in the morning, flashlights to deal with a courtyard and it would be students doing their homework, waiting for the doors to open at the junior high. that is how motivated they were. and the doors would not open for another hour or so. arnie duncan talked about president about having a meeting with the president of korea recently and our president opened the conversation by saying, what are your problems with education and career? the president of korea said the parents are demanding more of me than i can satisfy them with right now.

we've got the flip of that going on here. here is korea in 1950, was a stone age economy. 80% illiteracy. now it is one of the great industrial powers in the world. and they did that in the most hostile possible conditions at the peninsula out there. ever notice korean-americans who come here and open businesses and go to school, you know how driven they are. i deliberately didn't choose china to make it the centerpiece because we all know about that. that is going on never also as well. >> i very much enjoyed reading this encounter you had with president obama, where he said the biggest lesson we learned from world war ii is america can do anything when it puts its mind to it. but we've got to exercise those muscles. i think they have astrocyte a bit with ways we are profound

dangerous to our long-term prosperity and security. .. >> she said we're going to be more cautious. i worry about my friend.

i went to a couple of major construction people and i said what is going on? they said there's so much instrumentation that people will know anything. fannie mae and freddie mac were driving a lot of that and those are two political institutions. quasi public. they got very clever about getting the idea of homeownership for everyone, when plainly not everyone was qualified. and was going to be equipped. we are paying the price for the. we have 20 million homes in this country at the moment that are either in foreclosure or stressed or endangered going into foreclosure. that means 21 homes that are not buying no point is, not by new carpeting. they can't move to a new job. they are stuck. they are stuck with the biggest investment they will make in their life or many of them. this represents a lot of their net worth. intuitive housing thing figured out it's going to be harder job

to get the economy really rolling a contract in a way that we need to. neither party is talking about that which is striking to me. >> your book is made some very pointed questions. one of them is a question john f. kennedy as many years ago, if john f. kennedy were around today, asked you what would be done, what you could do to your country, what you've done for your country recently, how would you answer? how would you answer? >> i would say i'm at the your public library. [laughter] >> that's one of the things. what ails? >> i honestly think i'm at a stage in my life if there is an oxymoron in american life it is a humble anchorman, we don't exist. i have seen to a earned a certain place where people will listen to me, and i've always cared about the country. the greatest generation, writing

that book, gave me a kind of platform that was completely unanticipated. so i thought i ought not to squander that, so i ought to step up fast, not just a citizen and as a journalist, but as a father and a husband and a grandfather, and if i see these things i ought to write about them and tried to start this dialogue, which i'm trying to do with this book about where we need to get to next. in our family, we all do a lot of different things. meredith is here tonight. she has a microfinance project going in malawi. i have a daughter on the board of habitat here, another daughter who spent a lot of time in haiti issue living in a tent with rodents crawling all over. she was dented doing grief counseling to another daughter who work for the international rescue committee, the imposition in san francisco. because we were raised by parents and grandparents who

just saw that as a part of the national part of life come that you get back in some fashion. so i've done that but i think i would like to think that my large contribution is to try to engage people in the events that define our time. >> you have passages in the book precisely about the legacy of parents left to you, and how careful and cautious they were, and thrifty, and never spent more than they had. like almost everyone else of the age they were thrifty by nature and necessity. they didn't spend what they didn't have, and they save something every week. >> sometimes to a fault. >> to a fault. >> they were to thrifty. i would say lighten up a little bit. you can afford this. that it was hard for them to do

it. it was hard for them to spend the extra buck sometime but it didn't they didn't have a great life. they did. they did everything they wanted to do, and i had the good fortune of having real resources. so i could help them in ways, on trips or helping them buy a retirement place. it never define our relationship. my dad died unfortunate the week before i begin nightly news of a massive coronary, but about three weeks before i begin nightly news, it had been announced and this was a great thing for our family, for me to something of this wonderful job and all this responsibility. and it came with a very substantial salary. the wave of people getting paid a lot of money for doing this kind of work, and it got a lot of publicity. and my father, who never earned, i think, cash income more than $9000 a year in his life, made

at the end he did better than that. he worked for the corps of engineers as a construction foreman. anyhow, he called me, a wonderful sense of him, and he said i'm reading these reports about your salary. is that true? i said that can we've never talked about myself before. i had made good money before the but his had taken me two different level. and i said what you want to know? i don't know, just reading about it. we went on to something else. about a week later "time" magazine did a very detailed reporting of how dan was making, peter was making an i was making, barbara walters was making. my father called me and i called him red, red called me back. he said i'm reading "time" magazine. [laughter] i said come on, dad, why are we talking about this? he said i'll tell you why. for as long as you mother and i have no, you can give always run a little short at the end of the year. we need to know how much to set aside this year. [laughter] [applause] it was perfect, perfectly appealing. i also tell the story in the book.

i took them shopping in california one time. he came out to visit us, a very high in place. we were driving. i had the car going to the supermarket, and i thought i would show off my thrifty chain. they had fresh squeezed orange juice. and i said to dad, that stuff is expensive, let's get the boxed stuff. he reached down into my shopping cart and picked up three very expensive bottles of california wine, and he said i guess the money to save on oranges will help pay for these. [laughter] kind of put it into perspective for me. >> he must've been very proud. >> he was proud. he was not a modest about it did not ask my mother about me without her sing and my son, bill lives in denver is running a restaurant. my son mike lives around the corner. they just didn't play favorites. my father come when i first got to have some kind of public

celebrity, somebody once asked him, he was at a gathering at the elks club. somebody said are you related to tom brokaw? my dad looked and said i think he's a cousin, i'm not sure. [laughter] >> another aspect of your book that i would like us to talk about, which i didn't really know is the incredible importance you attach to what one might call enlightened form of philanthropy. of philanthropy plays an important role, and by that i mean foundation such as one of the ones that i'm thinking of is the robin hood foundation and. you talk about it anyway a model, the robin hood foundation, would do well to expand in many different cities.

>> we are very fortunate to have the robin hood foundation and i was a big skeptic when it first started. either these are a bunch of rich guys trying to buy some reputation. i had a lot of friends involved, and they invited me to the breakfast, which i have every year, another one coming up before too long, and john kennedy junior was there at the time, and he introduced to young the day gone to grad school with were running a school up in east harlem. it was very moving about what they were doing in the school and have john was attached to them. so when john was lost, i thought what can i be? i went up to the school and said i would like to help out for a while here, and they did. the robin hood people came to me and said we could really use you on the board, because communal, where all hedge fund guys. we make a lot of money, but we don't have a bunch of political fear. we don't understand how the rest of the world works. we're just having our way. we need somebody to give us a reality check.

so i went on the board administrator i was astonished at the commitment of the very busy people, and the discipline that the broad, how they gave away their money. they pay all the overhead for robin hood. they have metrics in which they go out to agencies, very professional staff, take the measure of an agency on what mothers, abuse family members, and they will say, come back and say that what is not going to work. it's not pashtun or is doing something really important but we need to go in and help the staff. they pay for everything. all that is done. this is the most generous country in the world. there's a the country in the world that gives money as truly as the united states does for a variety of causes, and no city will ever compare with new york when it comes to raising money. i mean, i do a lot of events at the waldorf, and sometimes for

causes that almost no one knows about. it's not routine to raise one have come to mind dollars a night at the waldorf. one of the things when we first begin to have somebody in our family, my girls sometimes were even more generous than i wanted them to be, what we could give away and win, but i had grown up with no money. when i found part of the attractiveness is it does give you freedom, and you can help out worthy causes. but robin hood is a model, but there are a lot of models. i want to share one other one with you that i'm particularly taken with now. this have to do with education which i think a lot of how we reform our education in america will depend on the public-private partnership. there's a man in the land by the name of tom cousins you was a very, very successful commercial developer down the. he built the cnn center andy owns a sports team.

he rebuilt downtown atlanta. he is probably a fourth generation georgian, well-educated man of faith. he's a presbyterian, married to a wonderful woman. he was making a lot of money, doing small things. he wanted to do something bigger, and he has an apartment at a golf course called east lake golf course where bobby jones played his first and last round of golf but it is completely deteriorated and they were surrounded by the most crime-ridden neighborhood in atlanta. and tom decided that he could change the neighborhood by beginning with a golf course. and everybody told him it was the dumbest i did they ever get his response was, i've lost of money money on your dumb ideas. i'm going to lose some on my i did not. he reformed the golf course and then he sold memberships and he made after a mud of money, took all that money. he went to the community.

it was not an easy sell because they're suspicious, a white guy coming in to take advantage of them. he said you need mixed income housing here. i'm going to build it so we can bring like working-class and middle-class families in. we need to change the school system. he did all of that. it is an amazing model environment. cnbc did a documentary on it, and warren buffett saw it and so did joanne robertson who is one of the fathers of the hedge fund entity. they called him up and said put us in, we are your partners. they have something called purpose built communities now in indiana, new orleans, charlotte. they're going to go into omaha in these downtrodden areas, and what they're doing is creating communities and making the school the centerpiece. i don't know how much his fortune he will give away, but he couldn't be happier and he couldn't be more modest about it. so i thought he deserved attention. there are other examples like that. that goes on in this country,

and what we need to do is elevate that kind of an example, it seems to me. and make sure that that becomes our goal. >> and that is with the interest in enlightened philanthropy resides? >> it does. one of the things that's happened in philanthropy is that this new generation, thomas is my age, but the new generation, the bill gates of the world, there's never anything like what bill and melinda done. the amount of money and what they're spending in the world, how active they are involved. this generation of philanthropists, they want to run their money. we are surrounded by the fiber end and the vanderbilts and the risks and the jp morgan's, and the ford foundation, but they really turned their money over to a foundation and walked away. this new generation wants control, and they are doing it and having a big, big impact and a lot of areas.

education i think will be held by a homebuilder from los angeles. jim simons, a math professor made so much money as a hedge fund guys. they have math courses going because they know what education did for them. >> i love that story you tell about gates and buffett, and why -- tell that story. >> i got to know bill early because i thought he was going to want to get in the business so i made a point of well before us did what he was up to, i made a point of going out to seattle and getting to know him. and, in fact, msnbc stands for microsoft nbc. we formed a partnership, didn't work out perfectly but we still have many pieces of in place. bill would come back to new york, and have meetings. he was meeting with jack welsh one day and shackled me because i help bring built into the

building. , and appear. we have stuff we have to discuss. i went up and they took our picture. this was before melinda kind of got control of bill's wardrobe and his personal grooming. [laughter] you know, he didn't care about all that stuff. it look like his hair had been cut by shrubbery shears of some kind. he had a plaid jacket, i remember, in striped pants, the jacket, power ceo suit. and i'm in my anchorman of the. we have our picture taken, and they get the picture to us immediately and i'm going off for lunch with a very close friend of mine, who is on warren's board and also his lawyer. and he called and said warren will be there as well. we had all known each other for a while. and we go to lunch and i show the picture to warren, and my friend ron, and i say you're a mother, you have three sons. which one are you worried about? [laughter] and warren without missing a beat said yeah, i often tell

people that bill and i are so rich because we share a common. [laughter] that was a killer line. >> your 50 years of being -- [laughter] >> half a century, yeah. >> but that also, i mean, there is that but it's also the strengths of longevity and dedication and doing something fully. who serve you early on and later on as models? >> who did i model myself on? >> yeah. >> i had come in my profession, i had the real privilege of being raised by newspaper guys. i caught the wave early. i got some very important jobs at an early stage in my life, and newspapers were still the

dominant culture when it came to covering politics. and covering everything in those days. and with us in los angeles, for example, i arrived in 1966 as a 26 euros to cover ronald reagan running for governor. the "l.a. times" had a really first rate political reporting team, older guys. and i've often thought back, i don't know what prompted me but the kind of put, metaphorically put her arm around me. and helped me through it. and kept their eye on me. and we became friends. we had dinner every night. one of them turned that was paul conrad, brilliant pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist. then i begin to write a little bit for the times and that kind of sealed the deal, you know, they felt like i was one of them. when i moved to washington as a white house correspondent i was coming from l.a. where i was known primarily as a local political reporter. them some skepticism whether i could do the job. after about three weeks on the job at the white house there was

a legendary washington newspaperman, by the name of peter, from chicago, and he did the same thing. he kind of became my friend, and we stayed in very close touch and talk to each other. and then i really closest friend from a content of mind at "the wall street journal," that really i thought, that helped me a lot because it gave me the discipline framework in which to operate as a broadcaster and all this. but also the standards of print journalism were different than what we did in broadcast. and what it did was keep my ego in check. you couldn't be a diva around those guys. they would let the air out of me in a nanosecond if i kind of got pumped up. peter used to mouth when you see across the way, i would be in a booth at a convention, for example, presiding over our coverage, kind of felt pretty good about this.

i look down out of the booth, 4000 people and i absolutely find peter, and he would mouth this obscenity to me silently. and it would break up. bring me back. [laughter] that was very helpful to me. and. [laughter] older guys, even across, walter cronkite and i became friends and i treasured that. and he really is not doing well right now. he's having a hard time, and i just will cherish that friendship forever. he's just a great men. when i made him a member of the greatest generation, wrote about them, he would just argue with me, i don't think i'm a member of the greatest generation. i don't like the phrase a veteran. i don't think you ought to call attention off i said i'm going to put askers by your name in the balkans everybody is a member of the greatest generation except andy rooney. [laughter] >> you still hold on to that phrase? >> i hold onto the phrase --

>> the greatest generation. >> i do pick my defense, that's what store and i'm sticking to it. and leave it at that. i used to before the book was written on the air, and a lot of people responded to it. and a catalog challenges to it, and i'm prepared -- it was not a perfect generation, i don't say that, but, in fact, a generation came out of the war, came out of the depression, life was about deprivation and sacrifice and not about a lot of hope. never one, never complaining. the greatest war in history of mankind it in 1939 this country was the 16th military power in the world. by 1941 we are in the greatest war of all time, and it's in the pacific as well as in europe, north africa. it's in six of the seven continents. and one day after pearl harbor, enlisted and become warriors. and at home we stop also been production of automobiles and

turnout new tanks and new weapons. they're building the b-29 down at wichita. talk to one of the machine is picky said engineers would leave on yellow legal pad drawings the night before, and we would machine them all night long by just looking at the drawing. we could figure out, these are farm boys who knew how to do this kind of thing. they did nothing less than say the world. it was not just the americans obviously, the brits holding the line originally. and then the russians pushing the germans back, which was hugely critical then they came home and didn't want a whimper again. they went to college, they build the industry, they gave us new art, new site. built states like florida, texas and california. got married in record of is going to to college, and then set about in the 1950s to achieve a prosperity none of them ever believed they could have. and they resisted some of the changes, but, in fact, as are my people, daddy was a member of

the greatest generation. she began to change the attitude about about women in america. and african-americans who served came back and that became the foundation of the civil rights movement because they were not going to be discriminated against in the same way. and then the next generation led by dr. king and others really did change that. the greatest generation, members of the dead launch the war in vietnam but members of the greatest generation for our most articulate critics as well as the senate, george mcgovern and gaylord nelson and others. who gave another kind of voice to me. so i'm satisfied that it was a generation worth celebrating. that's how i put them to take us back a little bit when you begin, you are an anchor so many years back then. was easier back then do you think than it is now? >> in my business? much easier, yeah. when i started, in television

news, i didn't see television until i was 15. we live in such remote parts of the country and then it was nirvana for me. i was 15 and i saw the beginning in 1955. i was just mesmerized by. >> can you remember exactly? >> i remember the night it was coming on. i remember them talking about it. >> what was your first impression? >> i don't remember. we were saying things that i never expected to be in my living room in south dakota. you know, i read the papers, i some of the news but to have on a black and white zenith television set at 5:30 p.m. to guys did a 15 minute broadcast and sang what was going on in washington that day and stuff that was going on in europe. it was amazing. before that, to go see the world series and a small town in which, mother would put us all in the car and drive us to sioux city, iowa, and would stand

outside a department store and watch on television to see the world series or go to sioux falls because they could get the signal. we couldn't get them in a remote area. i got to the big town of yanking, population 9000 we had a television, three channels to choose from. on sundays i remember watching walter cronkite, you know, doing his sunday afternoon kinds of shows. admiral it was a huge you of mine, watching all that. and i suppose then that the funding into form g., i would like to do that. the thing about television, network television in those days, it was a real meritocracy. they reached out across the country to get the correspondent core. "time" magazine and "the new york times," the other great print institutions, had to come from harvard or yale, have a different pedigree, and television, it was an open field. i often described as the overall land rush. a lot of us rushing across the

landscape i started into law, and when i was there, the station had a very good reputation, and we would often feed stories in. i remember one of the officers of nbc came out, they're going to go for 50 minutes to half an hour, they were worried they were going to be able to fill half so they're asking the affiliates to keep your eye on stories. the first time i appeared on l.a. brings become one of the five -- flying was and is fell off a bar at a circus in oh, my and died. i was on the air with it. >> with so many networks now, so many different ways of getting information, is network news still relevant? >> what i think now, i walked into bloomberg last night, i was doing charlie rose, i like going over there. bloomberg has a big stage with radio and internet and television and a lot of stuff

going on, and i said if i were starting over i would probably be looking at something like bloomberg to go to work for. doesn't mean i would give up on nbc because we have a lot of platforms as well. but all my friends, my contemporaries when i started in this business thought i was crazy because they're all going to law school, going to work. i was of the generation ago get a job friday and you would be a life or, stay there forever. i was a little more adventurous. i thought maybe i can get to network to pay for me to see the world, i now realize i don't wish on the account. i have seen more of it than they need to. it was very exciting, the idea that you could get on a plane and fly summer and be on there but i went from omaha to atlanta right at the height of the civil rights movement. that's when nbc picked me up sme to california. >> but by the time news comes to anchors, it's old news now. it's already being on "huffington post," is hard been in some way different places be

make it change. technology change. dan, peter and i grew up as corresponds. we want to be reported. now we find ourselves in a co-chairs. but fortuitously for all of us, technology change and a salad made it possible for us to anger from anywhere in the world. unit, we got an airplanes and flew to the philippines. a long way to go but it was a very exciting story. we were in china. 1989 -- >> you found yourself by chance in berlin? >> i was in berlin not entirely by chance. i didn't think the wall is going to come down but that is a good story. i want a lot of. i was there, the only one who was there that night. was laughing about it the other day because i like the outdoors and i don't have a formal wardrobe so i tend to wear l.l. bean jacket when i go on the road. i had this kind of worn out jacket and i was going on the

air the night the wall is coming down. this is going to be around for a long time, this view, so went over and got, mike badger, one of our correspondents had a good looking top jacket so i traded within. i show up with is very handsome top go, you know? >> i watched that moment of you at the berlin wall. bring us back to what it was like. there were a few milestones, at least three that are tremendous. of watergate, the berlin wall, and reporting 9/11. and i think the last one of course i think public must be one of the most difficult moments to report. if you can bring us back to what it felt like, those restores. >> put it quickly and larger perspective. people say to me was that the biggest for you have reported what it was the most difficult and the most difficult days that came after that. i do think it's the biggest of our lifetime is the fall of the soviet union and the

redefinition of communism with a rising china, the fall of the soviet union, the liberation of eastern europe. that's still playing at. that was an enormous seismic event in history. it lowered the threshold of the chances of thermonuclear exchange between these two superpowers. we still have the other area. so when i got to berlin the day before the wall came down because there was not much going on here, and they were trying to get out of berlin and get to czechoslovakia and other places. we are raising event. we have more access than we ever had before. i go to checkpoint charlie and report on the other side, and then late in the afternoon on that thursday, the propaganda chief for the east was at a news conference. it was a temple, his bureaucratic news conference, sending off all these question. i was exhausted because i had been up most of the time since i

left on tuesday at noon. and then all of a sudden someone handed him a piece of paper, and he said, he read the paper and he said the bureau has decided to present residents can exit a return to any of the gates of the wall. or words to that effect. it was like hearing this been come in from bars, the people in the room couldn't believe what they were hearing. a man said thank you very much, and he left. i had a point within it turns out the interview with right after this cover. so i went upstairs and got the camera in place, and i said, just pulled a piece of paper out again and read it to me again. let's talk about what it means. he pulled out and he read it again. and i said that means that residents of your country, citizens can lead anyway, anytime they want you through the wall? he said yes, that's what it means. and i ran downstairs with some

of my print colleagues were standing there, from the long island newspapers, and they're trying to figure out, could this mean? i said the wall is down. it's going to happen. so we raced back through the wall, through the gate at checkpoint charlie. the guard had given us a terrible time going in and out the last two days was standing there, and the kind of let us breeze through. and i stop and i said, do you know what's happened? even watching television. he suggested i said what you think? and he said to the interpreter, i'm not paid to think. he went on his way. by the time i got to brandenburg gate, the people i come from the west and they were cheering on the young people on the other side of the wall who are very uncertain about whether they should get up and come over the wall or not. one of our cameramen have been down to navigate, he had the first footage of people coming through the wall. and then they poured over the top of the brandenburg gate.

it was the most exciting single event to know that i was the only one there. everybody else was back at the studios in new york covering it. i kept thinking to myself, don't screw this up, tom, just don't screw this up, this is a big deal. [laughter] >> do you care to say something about watergate, reporting that moment? >> what it would be like today? >> no, watergate. >> watergate was, it would be much different today, unfortunate. people would be making judgments 24/7 about guilt or innocence. the white house press corps, i look back on that as a model of tempered reporting. we reported what we knew. we had suspicions and things kept unraveling as when a long. but no one went on the air and say he's guilty, and there's no way around. or we didn't have a lot of people debating each other on

the air. moreover, as a practical matter, as a reporter when i finish with the evening news, at 7:00, i could go work the phones to get ready for the today show the next morning. i didn't have to go on msnbc and talk to chris riley or rachel or somebody there, and speculate. i was going to do the work of the reporter. so when i got on the today show the next morning i had new sources and new information and ideas. it was a real constitutional crisis. the presidency was at stake. the country was deeply divided, but what i osha more about it, when the supreme court decision came down that they would have to give up the tapes and everybody knew it was over at that point. what i remember about it was once the tapes came out, this country, even the last defenders of richard nixon, said he broke the law, he's got to go. they said it to themselves or it

was unspoken, but everyone knew. i had been recording some republican senators during most of that year who were defenders of the president and they were conservative republicans, and one of them called me at about 6:00 the night that the tapes came out. and he said, tom, you've been very patient with me. he said, it's over and we're coming to tell them that. we will make a call first, and the white house told them not to come, that the president has made his to see that he's going to resign. that's a very dramatic time. tanks didn't role in the street and there was no military to of any time. people didn't hang on at the white house. i remember about two days later after president ford had been sworn in one of the white house staffers who have been very loyal to nixon came down the hallway to get something and then burst into tears. i said was, what's wrong? she said they told me to go get the present papers but i don't know which president they are talking about. president ford or president

nixon. but we got through that transition. >> in closing, i'm wondering two things. first of all, when you look back, any regrets? any stories that you feel you could have told better collect any stories that you feel you withheld and wish you had told? >> i didn't go to vietnam and i regret that. i was a young reporter for nbc and they didn't send married reporters. they sent mostly single people. i cover the war from home and that's a big piece what was going on. but i wasn't there so i regret that. most people say there's nothing to regret. given all the other things i've done with my life. story that we could have told better -- >> differently? told better? that you feel you didn't tell? >> i don't think, i think that

the signs were there for this economic downturn. i don't think we did a very good job. i was kind of out of the chair by then, but i went back, i like about this in the book. the night of the change from the new year's eve, 1999. none of us were saying this was not likely to happen. [talking over each other] >> how overheated the market was and what could happen. but the rest, we are worried about y2k. we didn't see 9/11 coming. the spring before the attacks of 9/11 i've gone down to see the director of the fbi, louis freeh, because i was working on computer haig, a story about these racists and bigots who are using come and is very well organized computers to spread hate. some people have been murdered as a result of their action, and

i want the fbi to cooperate with us, on a documentary about how the self hate crimes on the computer. louis said that's not high on a list of priority. you guys ought to be able to never forget that. that was like a march before the 9/11 attacks. i walked out with my colleague and friend he was the president of nbc news, and we can talk about that and he said made we should look into that but a kind of faded away. and then 9/11 happened. >> how do these things fadeaway? >> get faded away because, and i think is a part of what's going on now, it wasn't tangible in the way, even though we had the attacks on khobar towers and the call, tanzania. we are all lulled into thinking they will come here. i think part of the problem at the moment in this country is you can't touch and feel and smell were feel the hot winds of

the debt we are in in this country. so people can put it out of their mind. it's not looming over them in a way. you can talk all you want about what it's going to caution children and grandchildren, not because it's not tangible, it's more of an abstract, i don't think it has the same impact. >> in closing, you write about the face of journalism today, and you say this about investigative journalism. user without investigative journalism, what would we know about the peoples revolt in egypt, or long before that, of watergate? the silent spring, age, iran-contra, tiananmen square, nuclear proliferation, peace, calamity and heroism. tomorrow i'm welcoming on this very stage, any speech he gave at berkeley, a commencement speech, he says this, i have often wondered why we need the

phrase investigative journalism. isn't all journalism supposed to be investigative? is in a journalism without an investigative element little more than gossip? and isn't it enough gossip around already? >> i don't disagree with you but i've often said the same thing about investigative journalism. it's redundant in my judgment but their other forms of journalism. there's entertainment journalism. i to my friends in the print business when they complain about what they see on television, okay, i want to go to press tomorrow and onto the streets with only the front page. the no sports news, no crossword puzzle, no cartoons, and no entertainment guides, just the front page, just eat your spinach and we'll see how successful your. so journalism is a broad spectrum. i do believe that the culture of journalism will survive all

these changes and how it's delivered, absolutely. people have a constant appetite for information about what's going on in their lives. walter isaacson had written this wonderful book about steve jobs. he said something i hadn't thought about. he said i am buying print copies of books because i know they will survive and i want my children and grandchildren to see them in print form. i don't know what happens to the electronic books. will i be able to retrieve those? will i pay attention in the archive away of those books? i think -- carol morris by the way, i can't recommend this book, in the context of robert mcnamara, he's a brilliant documentary. >> thank you very much. [applause]

[applause] >> thank you. >> a couple of good questions. can we bring up a microphone? >> no questions? i think we been at this for 90 minutes so your primary everything you need to hear from me. go ahead. >> ago i had. >> thank you so much for being here and for sharing your words. i was very inspired. i would particularly interested in your description of the collaborative environment in which you were raised professionally, the mentors, and

as someone here who is not experiencing the same kind of cultivation in the workplace, more of the competition both among entry-level workers and among the more senior workers and entry-level workers. i'm wondering if you could speak of it to your opinion on that, how did we move away from the cooperative workplace to a competitive workplace? and what effect does that have on workplace and the productivity of all of us? >> do you want to repeat that question? [laughter] >> can you make it shorter? in a cooperative workplace -- >> cooperative workplace versus competitive. >> specifically your inspiring mentors and where did they go in the workplace today? are they still there? and might just not finding and? >> i'm not sure that i can

answer that. i think they are still here. i think that it still exists, but what i think is that the information overload and we see on the screen today, every day, has so many parts to it, it's hard to pull stuff out. so i don't think that we make the same kind of assessment or inventory that we once did. life was a lot easier a one point in terms of choices that we had to make him and we know what they're going to be. i think that's not so true anymore. >> thank you. >> if you could make your questions very tight. [laughter] >> i'm a printer, and i have spent some years of attended and covering conclaves of print journalists, american society of, the newspaper association of america.

they been themselves into pretzels every are tied beer titan have a need to find new ways to reach young people. and at a certain point there's a limit. can you recommend a way for the news industry to get together with the educational system, to somehow revive the public affairs that seem to somehow slipped out of -- >> that's a big internal debate about whether or not we should be trying to proactively encourage people to get in. >> because they missed their interest and the news industry can only do so much. >> yeah, and i honestly didn't think that was the mission of newspaper. i think our job is to cover the news and raise hell. that's what i really think. other institutions have to then get involved or getting people were involved in public affairs. what i do think is that if you're reasonably nimble on the internet now, and you can find

almost any kind of organization that you want, including those that will pull you in to public policy discussions and make you part of a kind of cyber group. part of the dilemma at the moment is that it's like drinking from a firefighter. there's so many choices out there, and bill clinton talks about the need to have a place what you can kind of get a test for reliable information. he said society -- so, you know, i think we just have to continue doing what we're doing, and make sure that public discourse is engaging and that people understand that it has relevance in their lives. >> we will take one more question. go ahead. >> hi. thank you so much for coming. what's your advice or a young journalist looking for an inspiring story?

>> my advice for young journalist is to study medicine. [laughter] know, my honest advice is this, it's you have to get used to the new instrumentation. you have to be a master at it because a lot of it is moving in that direction. there will always be a place for someone who can write, so who can express themselves coherently, and explain complex issues in ways that people can take away something that is meaningful and useful to them, whether it comes off the internet or the printed page or even on television. we have far too much now, there's what i call the school of hand at journalism. it's kind of improvisational. well constructed sentence is important over the air as it is on the printed page, or on the internet. >> thank you very much. [applause] [applause]

>> is there a nonfiction author or book you would like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> here's a short author interview from c-span's campaign 2012 bus as it travels the country. >> came back with, "political women and american democracy." how did you decide which essays to include in this worked? >> my co-editors and i organized with the grants, a project on american democracy at the university of notre dame that we would convene by our estimation the best scholars on women and politics in u.s. that only in u.s. but also scholars who were working on u.s. women and politics. so we brought together a range of people whose research we knew well and convened for a two-day

conference at notre dame. after which, at that conference we discussed all the mange scripts that constitute the chapters of these books, of this book, and had some commentary about it and discussion, and then put together as an edited collection which cambridge university press published in 2008. >> described the role of women described in this book. >> there are several in the book to let me tell you first what we are not doing in this book. we're not looking at public policy, we're not looking at women in the executive because even at the -- even in 2008 there was not yet a major to a candidate of a major political party in the united states. so very few women at the executive level which meant the research wasn't there yet to really have a good discussion but finally we didn't address women in the judiciary. so what we addressed, we at look at behavior of women as voters, the behavior women as candidates for office both state and

national office. behavior women within political parties. the behavior of women once elected to national office. we also have a huge look at the gendered nature of u.s. political institutions as well as u.s. politics for women and politics in the context of comparative politics. that is, what does the situation women in politics look like in the is compared to the rest of the world. the picture is not so pleasant actually. we have one of the least advantageous in electoral systems at the national level for women which is a single up around the system with some modifications but at the state level, we also have only two major political parties which are in formal and constructions, have no clear formal instruction for becoming a candidate, offer very little clear structure means by which women can work the party so to speak to

increase women's candidacies. there are lots of kisses and women have in the states. >> in relation to the political parties, as a woman voter, what are the finest way to being, encouraging them directly? >> there's some interesting things in unisys that make women effectively develop and demographic category. women have a slightly higher registration rates and demand, and women turn out at higher coastline higher percentages than getting. the larger number as the number of women combined with women heightened turnout makes for a big electoral impact. women also are disproportionately democratic. this is true across all age groups and is also true across all racial groups. to racial and ethnic groups, women still have a slight preference for the democratic

party compared to men. so when we come into an election it seems like china and the range of issues that might attract women are very important. women are more likely than men to vote for the democratic presidential candidate, that's been the case since 1992. that gap has been within two percentage points to five percentage points, depending upon the whole such a look at. but nontheless, there's a democratic advantage in the electorate, for the democratic party. in general because of women. gaslit numbers that turned out. the issues that seem to mobilize women and attract their vote have to do with special where the dash that welfare issues can have to do with foreign policy issues and also to a certain extent so-called proud issues. but on these, women very indifferent direction to issues like same-sex marriage women are less opposed to that than men, for example. not by huge margin but nonetheless, women are more

concerned with foreign policy security issues, and and i can have an impact on women's vote. and finding women are more concerned about social welfare issues, things like health care, employment, the state of the economy, education. >> with a woman candidate for president coming into the campaign do you see those preferences changing in 2012? >> of all i see no fewer candidate coming into the present of tennessee in 2012. there are only two on the list that i know of, sarah palin does not yet declared, and michele bachman who is doing very poorly right now in early returns, or early poll results in the republican party debates, and in the polling numbers for her. i don't see either of them being the ultimate candidate for the republican party. on the democratic side, all things being equal, the current president will be the party's candidate. so that will foreclose any

opportunity for women in the party to come forward. so i see no presents for women as presidential candidates in 2012. let me do say, however, that some polling data, and the most recent i've seen has only been from 2008, coming in very early in 2008 presidential primaries. about 87% of americans are willing to say that it would vote for a qualified woman, regardless of the sex, that they would be as going to vote for women as to vote for a man. americans are more likely, more willing to vote for someone who's african-american or someone who is jewish for president than they are for a woman. and i think that number is slightly lower than had been the previous results because in 2008 it was a clear potential female candidate and that was hillary clinton on the democratic side who ultimately failed to win the nomination. >> so what are some recommendations for women in that position, in an elected

pole position are running for office? does that matter come up in your book? spent we don't turn to the presidential specific about what you look at women's candidacies for a lower level office. so a couple of recommendations, recommendations for women so let me just make clear, we only need about 4000 women nationwide to contest and win elections to have equitable representation in the senate and the house and in state houses. there are not that many elected offices at the legislative level at least that requires we need 1 million qualified women. i think we can find 4000, 4500 qualified women to run. so that's not the issue to the prom is not with women. the problem is with political parties and the unavailability of access to candidacies. both the intimacy effect, if we have come as we do, 83% of

congress consisting of men, and most of those men are incumbents, are we forever difficult for new openings come for new candidates with another candidates are women. as a part of it has to do with political party willingness to persuade members of congress conceded member of congress to step down and one to support women challenging and comes within their own parties, willingness to recruit women for office. right now the so-called big money people on the republican side are trying to recruit governor christie from new jersey to enter the presidential nomination race on the republican side, which he so far at least has refused to do. but there are women that might be recruited. there are some very good enough governors on republican side who might be recruited. so at this point my argument is it's not the problem of women. it's the problem of parties and specifically i might add the republican party. women are not represented in the democratic party by two to one, three to one margin everywhere over republicans.

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efforts in giftgiving ideas click on c-span products or dvds and books and more. at the all new c-span.org. >> deepak chopra and leonard mlodinow debate whether science or religion forms the best foundation for understanding the world. this is about 50 minutes. >> good evening. i'm one of the founders of the synagogue, and i welcome you here tonight for what should be a very, very interesting evening. the building we're sitting in is 103 years old, and has always been a space of spirituality. give doctor shope are a bit of an edge in tonight's discussion, but i'm confident that it'll be very evenhanded at the end of the day your that don't have gone through a