[applause] >> the first ten people who sign up after our event tonight and become friends of the new york public library, obviously all of you are already friends of the new york public library, but supports us even more if you would will get tom brokaw's new book out for free. no you will know who tom brokaw is. for the last few years i have asked the various guests for ideography of themselves written by themselves in seven words, the high court of sorts if you really want to be modern which may be tom brokaw and i will talk about a tweet of sorts. so tom brokaw said the the

following seven words and they are. some people ask for seven words to give me 27. no, seven words. he knows what that assignment is. he says curious, talkative and grateful for that. impulsive, in patient, forgetful a am i. tom brokaw. [applause] ♪ >> of frank sinatra.

>> have mixed feelings with frank sinatra. in my generation he was the voice and he was larger than life in many ways and i encountered along the way and always pleasantly because i was a reporter and he didn't like being in the news and the way that he got himself into the news so he went to 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, he doesn't think an era where he is underwriting an orphanage in mexico or some good deed. i said no i did hear about that. it doesn't excuse which he was involved in last night or whatever and then to a of a set of circumstances one evening in new york we had a beautiful friend of legendary figure by the name of a swift the who was a great agent frank's life and

then for impleader and i thought what is the swing to be likened frank sinatra came down and looked at the. assuming the today show at the time and played the term and of course i was instantly seduced by all that because he didn't know which one was going to show up. when the good one showed up he was absolutely wonderful. >> i have another occasion leader and don't want to give too many frank sinatra stories but he made it in b.c. because we had a great and those that worked at nbc knew i liked sinatra it said stick around to light it's going to be about 2:00 in the morning but you will want to hear this and the

orchestra. i went to the sound stage way in the back no one could see me and frank came in at 2:00 in the morning coming in by some of the artist because he worked with the orchestra and the store she was dressed all business. the model focused that he had in doing take after take after take. and i thought that is why he is who he is because he was so good at it. >> i promise you we will not only talked about frank sinatra but it strikes me in the story that you also mentioned he was the voice if there's one thing you were known for tremendously it is your own voice. >> it is widely imitated as well. no one does it better than grew david gregory. [laughter] i get picked up on a lot and that is why it is a form of flattery. i cannot seem of no.

she brought music to our family thank god because the girls are fine. >> i would like to begin quite simply by a preference in the subtitle of your new book, the time of our lives. the subtitle reads who we are, where we've been and where we need to go now to recapture the americans green the the country and. i was rather struck by just how loaded the terms are it for someone who's the this country for 30 years or would like you to explain to me what it means, these words american dream. >> everyone has their own interpretation but i would suppose if there is a kind of

consensus it is the american dream that our children will have better lives than we well that every succeeding generation has a little better life in some fashion. it's gotten reduced to what i call the total quality-of-life and that is what we have to examine. that ought not be the measure of the american dream a and what i try to do in this book is turn the thing came to the quality-of-life let's make that the american dream what tolerance of america more opportunity in the workplace so everyone has an equal opportunity to move themselves forward it doesn't seem walled off in the ordinary americans. if that is getting that the american dream that is the question that comes a bit as i

say in the book china and tie it again as i go back in the country people in the into the street and power so i ask them to examine what does that mean because happiness would be achieved in the different ways and we ought to have a continuing pride. >> the word recapture is very important because it is important to something that was lost. >> i think it has been lost to some degree. if you look at the polling in this country to the confidence in the institution is down to single digits in the instances most people think the country is very much on the wrong track, not on the right track. the express' overtly their anxiety about the future that their children will have as they

look at the workplace disappear really once did a series on nbc nightly news about all the workers in america and i take five generations of the life of agreed grandfather who had been working the original fourth factory in the beating up with the dunes with the trend toward - organize. his son about the grave of the 50's and great benefits with celery and retirement programs and fishing boat in the good life. his son was outsourced all across the midwest from ohio to indiana to these other beltline plants that were not part of the central force system. when i said what are you going to do with the 10-year-old they said in unison the computers, we have to get them working on computers. so that's the transition. there was the time if you have a strong back and a good pair of hands and work boots you could

find a good job in america and get paid for it we were then in the factoring capital of the world that is a longer true 40% of the american economy and financial services shovelling money and creating new instruments. >> some people think that next generation for their children to do better the invaded in their own time to be productive is something that has almost always existed. do you feel it is exacerbated? stevan during the worst days in the 60's i think the greatest generation as i call them with often the sheep how their kids are beefing but they say they are so smart, so well-educated and the truffle so easily and i can't believe the salary that they get in the law firm or at ibm or one of those places. i used to take the temperature of that generation a lot because i was covering the 60's a lot leave even though they were not

happy with the report they could see that they were the masters of the world a and the idea that their children could say i'm going to take a couple years of the bible to travel the world and come back and start my career or they were starting businesses at the very early age and doing inventive things and their parents were looking at them with a sense of awe. now they are looking get the with the sense of anxiety and they are looking at them across the dinner table because they are moving back in with them in big numbers, and they do it for a couple of reasons. one is economics. they can't get a job. the can't afford urban housing. the second is i trust my parents. they are my best friends and counseling by going to get and light speed with the corporations have done with life - or whether. educating their children.

savitt yes that educating them for what, that is the issue. i believe a society has always been served by strong local arts but in the modern economy you also have to have specific skill sets to work in high-tech manufacturing, therefore there is a boom going the lead in america in the community colleges because they are affordable and they are teaching young people practical skills to take to the workplace and other young people get their friends did go off to college and emerge as 10% of them do now. those with student loans 10% of a debt of $40,000 with a lot of college. that is a big load to start life with. stupak so much reminds me of my own father when i went off to the university before i went off to the university both my

parents from a and old vienna my father sat me down and said don't forget the word university comes from the word universe. don't forget for one second you might be studied literature and philosophy and back in those days but right across the street is the medical school. ago we had looked healthy cut up a body. go we'll look at what other people do. i was reminded by this in part by this fabulous quotation that you have of the former president where you say it's fantastic. he would not expect to know what you were expected to wish to know. i would like you to elaborate on that because i felt that was very inspiring.

>> unabated for the incoming speech every year and then the baccalaureate speech and i made it clear to them by giving them off assessed as i can with a real l. lloyd wisdom of the kind and he's a very literary figure and he would give wonderful speeches to the incoming freshmen and those who were leaving. he would also say to them i think the was a baccalaureate speech in which he said do not become hostage to the orthodoxy as you leave here and at that point we were going through the jerry falwell influence in american politics and the moral a jury coming and he found that tyrannical in the political ethos and he was threatened by the way for taking it on the.

but he was singing to the university students, you know, use your mind to reason come to think, to be independent. we have in my judgment to few of them in my life anymore. i also called joe gardner who is a founder of the common cause who has his own kind of populace wisdom about how we should conduct ourselves in a civil and social society. >> do you feel he was saying that because in some ways people are not an adventurous enough when they go into school? >> i think this is a pretty a venture this generation know. i don't think that they have the sports that they once did because they find it in instrumentation these days. and how much they serve that to get that kind of wisdom, i don't know. but they are fascinated with good reason by the technology.

i have a law and that i use when i go to the 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 know anticipate all allowing universities are exploding for example. bill gates deceiving in online active academy at one time or another great literature are reading and things. then i say to them that you are not going to reverse global warming by hitting backspace. you won't get rid of global poverty. and i ended by saying it will do as little good if the short circuit our souls if we compete on the ground. >> but you also say that you worry about the day when someone

will write a song called a tree is just a tree. [laughter] we don't want to hear that song really also look to the audience and say to the young people no text message will ever replace the whispered i love you or holding hands of the first date. -- of the new technology while you see the value what worries you about them is that people are not thinking enough about their limitations. >> because of the that humankind is advanced by technology that has wisdom in the hymns that activates and has pashm they bring to their lives as well. it's an instrument which the tool. and they should drive that technology. mo the other way around.

also worry that yale or actually stamford wall when i was out doing work in silicon valley i was sitting at the stanford law school the end was online and the cme and came over to be and i'm very partial to stanford because i left a lot of tuition there for my daughter but he said to be a very pertinent question. he said you've written a lot about generations. what about my generation is the definition and the meeting a friend, do we know what that means and are we going to lose it because we are finding people know? it is a very relevant question how do you measure from shipwrecks about not just because you share a facebook page or the know-how to sweep you or find you. >> also one of the things that your book speaks about is the notion that technology in some ways also interrupt our thinking

and this would lead us quite nicely. >> you really have to bring discipline to the technology. it's too easy it's easy to go on google and start searching and searching for something with it has any meaning or not. someone has said to be it's certainly true of my case i have a friend who is not technologically advanced. he is quite disabled and we are trying to encourage him to get in on it booktv.org he said is that that thing that old menus in the middle of the night so they to the rise knowing the news? [laughter] >> we haven't had a dialogue in this country. we have to assemble some were to have that dialogue but even within families there hasn't been much of a dialogue. best use of this technology and

what to be aware of it i will segue into saying what i said to the audience as well about the impact of this technology on journalism and not just on the forms of journalism but how we get our news there was a tiny lot of you remember well we just got up in the morning and got the morning paper or went to the newsstand and picked off one of the mehdi of papers available gateau the evening and watched tom or day of or peter and that was it, you were a couch potato. it was delivered to you. now you have to be proactive consumer. you have to go the sources of this information not just take it because it comes off the screen if you have to measure the credibility and reliability over time. somebody in montana comes to be on a regular basis and says you're not going to believe what

i saw on the internet today and i say you're right by not going to believe it. [laughter] a net i see this in the group's assemble such as this one the your name to come together. as i often say we needed some form or fashion others. you say we must return to our fundamental obligation. it is time to reenlist in citizens. when you and i spoke we repeated that to we had last as citizens. speed it has become my mantra and i just measure what we are up to against our the history of the legacy that we have inherited. let me give you the ec example of that. and i say this for a lot of you have probably heard me say this more than you would like at this point.

i have been engaged in ljungqvist war american history. that is an indisputable fact iraq and afghanistan and a lot of families of america paid a terrible price for the wounded. people physically and otherwise. they represent less than 1% of the population. they are all volunteers read they come from middle class and working-class families primarily. very few institutions or upper-income families in uniform to fight for all of us. they are wearing this terrible burden. nothing is asked for the rest of us. we don't even have to think about it if we choose not to. we can go through our lives in the the war can be going on almost as an abstract for us. that's not just on the just in my opinion this kind of immoral and the space society. so that is in a civil of what i use how we did have for the rest of us have to -- i have a title

for a chapter called kunkel sam leaves us and we have to reenlist the citizens. this next year is going to be very important. i don't know whether the republicans will win next fall or the democrats were the third party candidates, but i do know that the determined and the defined by the people who get into the arena and pursue and encourage the will for a minute to go forward and set a "meet the press" a month ago and as began recently that however -- what ever you think about the tea party coming and i can only guess in a room like this, but -- [laughter] but the tea party played by the rules. they got angry, they got organized, they got to washington and the state disciplined yet they are dominating the dialogue on the republican presidential debate because of that disappointment.

on the proportion of the actual numbers if you look at the polling they don't represent a majority has the distinct minority. but because they stay on the message and because they use the instrumentation that is available to them the tail wagging the dog did this point to the republican party so if you to counter it or bring your own to the arena you have to reenlist as a citizen. s make in the same way you think that the public service is so important. >> this is not just for me this is from the ground up. and wherever i go in the country people say why can't we have mandatory public service or a lot of males will he be a certain age we should go back to the drafting of the draft won't happen again. it is to back politically toxic. the military doesn't like it. the like a motivated volunteers but there is no reason why we cannot elevate the idea of the public service so that it's more

than some of its part. there are a lot of good programs out there now. teach for america. but after being indicted with the troops in afghanistan and iraq, especially in afghanistan, on a couple of occasions the special forces in the division i going to these remote villages where i see these guys i was with with the ogle seung-hui omans confess it the would be picking up trucks and confiscating weapons and then in a way would say to the village of terse we are here to win your hearts and minds it doesn't work. it doesn't connect. there's got to be a better way. we can't just have a military force to peace america and by the way i stila meijer these four years because the are well-trained and they know what they are doing and frustrated because too much is being asked of them so i can backend wrote about this from the time exactly why can't we have a diplomatic

special force? people who are net interest in civilian that led me to believe we ought to have public service academies of america attached to the land grant schools make it public and private and of the johnson fellow in medicine, the john deere fell in the agriculture, caterpillar dillinger construction. the spend three years getting the specialized training. then the they are assigned both by accommodation of the government and private sector coalitions to the broad work in this country. at the end of the three years in the public service, then the corporation takes them in for two years to prove up so to speak. they get a chance to see whether they want to keep them and whether the young man or woman wants to stay there. this lot as well formed as a lot to be because i was trying to kick start a conversation. originally i said some friends of mine that the big businessmen and one of them i didn't have

the private piece of this. he said they get private public. to the private sector involved psp mcginn you are very interested in that partnership between the public and private. is it is a big trend in this country. mitch daniels is doing the law in indiana turning it over to private corporations. but on a smaller basis across the country the water districts are being turned over to the private companies and more profitable and efficiently. the state in which you live has 11,000 state agencies. this is a system that was designed for the political patronage 100 years ago. this isn't necessary for us to have that many state agencies here. along the island, as you go across the county each county has a different water district and a different set of rules. what would you do -- >> i would consolidate a lot of

it. a lot of education in america. it's very tough because people have pride in these institutions , and the system that is going to consolidate and change and reform them as a system that is being reform and is being rewarded by the way that it exists know. so they are not inclined to do it. >> we have on this very state smell of blood -- gladwell for teach for america and i think one of the most powerful parts of the book is precisely you're worried with the state of education in this country, and you have this anecdote about being in korea and seeing children, aggregating, very young children. that was 15 years ago. i was there during the olympics and we were doing the laundry you because of the time difference very late at life and really early in the morning and when i was finished it would be

not yet done by what looked back from the building i was doing it on the rooftop there was a junior high court card below the and about 5:454 6:00 in the morning the flashlight's would be all over the courtyard and a would-be students doing their homework waiting for the door to open up the junior high. that's how motivated the war. the doors are not free to opened for another hour or so. arne duncan the secretary of education have a meeting with the president of korea recently into the president opened the conversation by saying so what are your problems with education in korea and the president said the parents are demanding more of the and i can satisfy right now. we have the flood of that going on right now. here is korea in 1950 with a strategic, become 80% illiteracy. now it is one of the great industrial powers of the world. and they did that in the most

possible conditions, that rocky little peninsula and anyone knows they come here and open businesses and what to school how driven they are. i deliberately didn't choose china to make it the centerpiece because we all know about that but it's going on everywhere also as well. >> i very much enjoy reading this encounter you have 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've act provided it with ways that we are profound and dangerous to our long term prosperity and security. the notion of an atrophy muscles, exfil and all that and then in some ways i think it does connect to the story.

>> i don't think he's wrong. .. there is so much enjoyment haitian out there that people will own anything and fannie mae and freddie mac were driving a lot of that and those were two political institutions,

quasi-public, and i got very clever, jim johnson and others about getting the idea of homeownership for everyone when plainly not everyone was qualified, and was going to be quickly. we are paying a big price for that now. we have 20 million homes in this country at the moment that are either in foreclosure or stressed or in danger of going into foreclosure. that means we have 20 million homes that are not buy new appliances and not buying new carpeting. they can't move to a new job. they are stuck and they are stuck with the biggest investment they are going to make in their life for many of them. this represents another and -- a lot of their net worth. if we get the housing thing figured out it's going to be harder job to get the economy really rolling back on track in a way that we need to and neither party is talking about that which is kind of striking to me. speier book is made of some very poignant questions. one of them is a question and that john f. kennedy asked many

years ago. if john f. kennedy were around today and asked you what you could do to your country, what you have done for your country recently, how would you answer? how would you answer? >> i would say i'd appear the new york public library. [laughter] >> that is one of the things. >> i honestly think that i am at a stage in my life -- if there's an oxymoron and american life it's a humble anchorman, we don't exist. so this is a modest for me but i have seen to have earned a certain place where people will listen to me and i have always cared about the country. "the greatest generation" of writing that book gave me a kind of a platform that was completely unanticipated. so i thought i ought not to squander that so i ought to step up as not just as a citizen and

as a journalist but as a father, husband and a grandfather and if i see these things i ought to write about them and try to start this dialogue which is what i'm trying to do with this book about where we need to get to next. now, in our family, we all do a lot of different things. meredith is here tonight. she is a microfinance or is it going and i have a daughter on the board of habitat here and another daughter who has spent a lot of time in haiti this year living in a tent with rodents crawling all over her. she was down there doing grief counseling at another daughter who work for the international rescue committee as an er in san francisco. we were raised by parents and grandparents who just saw that as a part of the natural calling of life, that you gave back in some fashion so i've done that but i think i like to think my larger contribution is to try to engage people in the events that

defined their time. >> you have passages in the book precisely about the legacy your parents left to you and how careful and thrifty and never spent more than they had. you say, like almost everyone of their 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 speedway fall. >> they were to thrifty and they didn't, you know i would say lighten up a little bit. you can afford this but it was hard for them. it was hard for them to spend the extra buck sometimes. didn't mean they didn't have a great life. they did everything they wanted to do and i had the good fortune of having real resources and so i could help them in ways that you know on trips are helping

them buy a retirement place. but it never defined our relationship. when my dad died unfortunately the week i began nightly news with massive coronary, it had been announced and this was a great thing for our family, for me to suddenly have this wonderful job and all this responsibility. it came with it a very substantial salary. i caught the wave of people getting paid a lot of money for doing this kind of work and my father who never earned i think cash income more than $9000 a year in his life. may be at the end he did better than that. he worked for the corps of engineers as a construction foreman. anyway he called me. had a wonderful sense of humor. he said i'm reading these reports about your salary. is it true? i said no dad we have never talked about my salary before. i've made this kind of money

before that but does it take me to another level. i don't know, just reading about us and we went on to something else in a week later "time" magazine did a detailed report and dan was making and peter was make in what harbor walters is making so my father was redhaired and he called me and i called him read. 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 will tell you why we are talking about it. for as long as you mother and i've known you you have run a little short at the end of the year and we need to know how much to set aside this year. [laughter] it was the perfect way of dealing with it. that was the story it told in the book. i took him shopping in california one time. he came out to visit us and we are at a high-end place. we were driving and i have a car going to the supermarket and i thought i would show off my -- so they had fresh squeezed

orange juice. i said to dad, that stuff is really expensive. let's get the box stuff and he reached down and my shopping cart in picked up three expensive bottles of california wine and he said, i guess the money that you save on oranges will help pay for these. [laughter] that put it into the perspective for me. >> but he must have been very proud. >> he was proud but you know it was not in modesty and you could not ask my mother about me without her saying, my son bill who lives in denver's running a restaurant and my son mike went into the marine said he lives around the corner. they just didn't play favorites. in my father when i first got to have some kind of public celebrity, somebody once asked him when he was at a gathering at the elks club. he went to the elks club in our hometown and somebody said or you read it -- related to tom broke out? by dfa, i think he is a cousin. i'm not sure.

[laughter] >> another aspect of your book that i would like us to talk about is, which i didn't really know, is the incredible importance you at action to what one might call an enlightened form of philanthropy. philanthropy plays an important role and by that i mean foundations such as one of the ones that i'm thinking of you are attached in the city is the robinhood foundation. and you talk about it as, in a way, a model. the robinhood foundation would do well to expand in many different cities. >> we are very fortunate to have the robinhood foundation. i was a big skeptic when i first started. a bunch of rich guys trying to buy some reputations here. at a lot of friends around balked in it and they invited me to their breakfast, which they have every year.

they have one coming up before too long. john kennedy jr. was there at the time and he introduced to young men that he had gone to prep school with who were running a school in east harlem. it was very moving about what they were doing in the school and how john was attached to it. so when john was lost, i thought you know what can i do? i went up to the school and i said i would like to help out for a while here and i did. than the robinhood people came to me and said, we could really use you on the board because you know we are all hedge fund guys and we make a lot of money, but we don't have much of a political at year. we don't understand how the rest of the world works as much as we are used to having our way. we need somebody to give us a reality check. so i went on the board of them must tell you i was astonished at a, the commitment of these very busy people and b, the discipline that they to how they get away their money. they paid all the overhead for robinhood. they have metrics in which they

go out to agencies, very professional staff. they take the measure and agency for on what others or for abused family members and they will saysay, come back and say that is not going to work. it's doing something really important that we need to go in and help the staff and they pay for everything. now this is the most generous country in the world. there is no other country in the world that gives money as freely as the united states does for a variety of causes and no city will ever compare with food or what it comes to raising money. i do a lot of events at the waldorf and sometimes for causes that almost no one knows about and it's not routine to raise 1.5, $2 million in one night at the waldorf. one of the things when we first began to have some money in our family, and 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 and one i found heart of the attractiveness of it, it does give you freedom and b, you can help out worthy causes. but robinhood is a model but there are a lot of models. i will just share one of the one with you that i've have particularly been taken with now. and this has 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 is a man in atlanta by the name of tom cousins who is very very successful commercial developer down there. he built the cnn center and he owns a ford -- sports team and he is regal downtown atlanta. he is probably a third or fourth generation georgian, well-educated man of faith. he is a presbyterian, married to a wonderful woman and he was

making a lot of money. he was doing small things anyone to do something bigger. there is the eastlake area that had a golf course called eastlake golf course. goes where bobby jones paid -- played his first and last round of golf but a completely deteriorated and it was surrounded by the most crime-ridden neighborhood in atlanta. tom decided that he could change the neighborhood by beginning with the golf course. and everybody told him it was the dumbest idea they had ever heard. his response was, i've lost a lot of money on your ideas and i'm going to lose money on my ideas now. he reformed the golf course and then he sold memberships and beta fair amount of money. he took all that money went to the community and it was not an easy sell because they were suspicious that it was just a white guy coming in to take advantage of them. he said you need nixon and -- mixed income housing. and want to build so we can bring little class families and we need to change the school system. he did all of that.

it's an amazing model environment. cnbc did a documentary on it and warren buffett saw it and so did joe and robertson who has a lot of you know is they the father the hedge fund industry. they called him up and said put us in, we are your partners and they have something called erpa's build communities now. they are in indiana, they are in new orleans and charlotte and they are going to go to omaha into these downtrodden areas. what they are doing is creating communities and making the school the centerpiece. i don't know how much fortune he will give away, but he couldn't be happier and he couldn't be more modest with all of 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 to elevate that kind of an example it seems to me and make sure that that becomes our goal. >> and so that is where the interest in philanthropy resides.

>> it does and one of the things that has happened in philanthropy is that this new generation, people that are my age but the new generation, the bill gates of the world, there is never been anything like bill and melinda are doing. the amount of money they are spending and how actively they are involved, this generation of philanthropists, they want to run their money. you know we are surrounded by this library as the vanderbilts and the jp morgan's and the ford foundation, but they really turned the money over to a foundation and walked away. this new generation wants control and they are doing it and having a big big impact in a lot of areas. education i think will be helped in part by a homebuilder from los angeles, jim simons who made so much money as a hedge fund guy. they have got mass forces going and they know what education did for them.

>> i love the story you tell about gates and buffett. >> shall i tell that? >> tell that story. >> i got to know bill early because i thought he was going to want to get in our business because we were going to have to do content so i made a point of -- said what he was up to and i made a point of going to say i want to get to know him. in fact msnbc stands for microsoft nbc. we formed a partnership. it did work out perfectly but we still have many pieces in place. bill would come back to new york and have meetings and he was meeting with jack welch one day. jack called me because i've helped bring him to the building. come on appear. we have some things we have to discuss and they took our picture. this was before melinda got control of the wardrobe and his personal grooming. [laughter] he didn't care about all that stuff. it looked look like his herat been cut by shrubbery shears of

some kind. he had a plaid jacket i remember and strife it pants and his power ceo sued and i'm in my anchorman outfit. we have our picture taken in late they get the picture to this may really. i'm going to lunch with the close friend of mine who was on warren's lord and his lawyer and he called and said hey warren is going to be there as well. we had all known each other for a while. and we go to lunch and i show the showed the picture to warren and my friend ron. i said you are a mother, you have three sons. which when 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 calm. [laughter] that was a killer line. >> in your 50 years of being an

anchor -- [laughter] >> half a century. >> yeah. >> but that also is that, but it's also the strength of longevity and dedication and doing something fully. who served to you early on as later on as models? >> who did i model myself on? i had in my profession, i had the rare privilege of being raised by newspaper guys. i caught the wave early. i got some very important jobs at an early stage of my life and the newspapers were still the dominant culture when it came to covering politics. and covering everything. when i was in los angeles for example i arrived in 1966 as a 26 euros to cover ronald reagan running against pat brown for

governor and the "l.a. times" had a first-rate political reporting team, older guys. i often thought back and i don't know what -- but they metaphorically put their arm around me and it helped me through it. they kept their eye on me and we became friends. we would have dinner every night in one of them turned out, was paul comrade -- conrad and i began to write a little bit for for the time tonight kind of sealed the deal. they felt like i was one of them. when i move to washington as a white house correspondent i was coming from l.a. where is doing primarily global political reporting and there were some skepticism as to whether i could do the job. 33 weeks on the job at the white house there was a legendary washington newspaperman by the name of peter lissa corp., the best-of-breed. he did the same thing. he kind of became my friend and we stayed in close touch and talk to each other. then my really closest friend a

contemporary of mine was a "wall street journal" reporter. that really i thought, that help me a lot because he gave me the discipline framework in which to operate as a broadcast journalist. but also be standards of print journalism were different than what we did in broadcast. what it did was keep my ego in check. you couldn't be a diva around those guys. i mean they would -- in a nanosecond if i got puffed up. peter list of core used in mouth when he would see me across the way, would be in the pathetic convention for example presiding over coverage. i would look down out of the booth and 4000 people i absolutely would find peter and he would mouth this obscenity to me silently. it would break me up and kind of bring me back to what i was doing. that was very helpful to me.

[laughter] older guys, i'm in walter cronkite and i became friends and i treasure that. andy rooney is not doing well right now. he is having a hard time and i just will cherish that friendship forever. he is just a big man. when i made him a member of "the greatest generation" and wrote about him he would argue with me, i don't think i am a member of "the greatest generation" brokaw. i don't even like the phrase veteran. i don't think you ought to call it that. i finally said andy i'm going to put an asterisk by your name is everybody's the number of "the greatest generation" except rooney hear. >> but you still hold onto that phrase. >> i hold on to the phrase, "the greatest generation." >> i do and my defenses, that's my story and i'm sticking to it. and i will leave it at that. used it before the book was written on the air and a lot of people responded to it. i've had a lot of challenges to it and i'm prepared but it was

not a perfect generation. i don't say that but in fact that generation came out of the war, came out of the depression, whatever. life was about depravation and sacrifice and not about a lot of hope. never whining and never complaining and often thought the greatest war in history of mankind. 1939 this country was the 16th military power the world. by 1940 when we are in the greatest war of all time. and it's in the pacific as well as in europe and north africa. it's in six of the seven continents and half of us one day after pearl harbor have enlisted and become warriors. at home we stopped production of automobiles and turned out new tanks in new weapons. they are building the b-29 in wichita. talk to one of the machinist and he said the engineers would leave on a 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 were

farm boys he knew how to do this kind of thing. they did nothing left to save the world and it was not just the americans obviously. the brits holding the line originally and then the russians pushing the germans back. then i came home and they want to college in record numbers and built new industries. they gave us do our did news fives and built states like texas and california. got married in record numbers, went to college and then set about the 19 50s to achieve prosperity none of them believed they could have. and they resisted some of the changes but in fact is i remind people betty friedan was a member of "the greatest generation." she began to change the attitude about women in america. and the african-americans who served came back and that became the foundation for the civil rights movement because they were not going to be discriminated against in the

same way. and then the next generation really did change that. the members were most articulate critics as well as george mcgovern and gaylord nelson and the others who gave another kind of voice to it. so i am satisfied that there was a generation worth celebrating. that is how i look at a. >> take us back a little bit when you began and you were an anchor so many years back then. was it easier back then do think that it is now? >> in my business? much easier. when i started in television news, i didn't see television until i was 15. we lived in such remote parts of the country and then it was nirvana. >> you sought for the first time many were 15? >> 15, 1955 and i was just mesmerized by it.

>> can you remember exactly? >> i do remember the night was coming on and i remember them talking about it. >> what was your first impression? >> i see that we were seeing things that i never expected to see in my living room in south dakota, you know and i read the papers and i saw it on the news. but to have it on the black-and-white zenith television set at it 5:30 at night to guys giving a 15 minute broadcast and saying you know what was going on in washington that day and the stuff that was going on in europe. it was amazing. before that, to go see the world series in a small town in which a mother would put all of us in the car and drive to sioux city, iowa and we would stand outside a department store and watch on television to see the world series. to sioux falls because they could get signals. we couldn't get them in a remote area. i lived in the big, painting, population 5000. in a television signal with three channels to choose from and on sundays i remember

watching walter cronkite doing a sunday afternoon kinds of shows, ed murrow was a huge hero of mine, watching all of that are going i suppose then that the thought began to form, gee i would like to do that. the thing about network television in those days, it was a real meritocracy. they reach out across the country to get the corresponding core anti-magazine and "the new york times" and the other great print institutions, you had to come from harvard or yale or have a different pedigree and television, it was an open field. i often described as the oklahoma land rush. a lot of us rushing across that landscape so i started in omaha and when i was there come the station had a very good reputation. we would often feed stories to huntley brinkley. i remember one of the officers of nbc came out of there were

going to go from 15 minutes to half an hour. they were worried they wouldn't be able to fill the half hour so they were asking the affiliates to keep your i am the stories. the first time i appeared on huntley brinkley, one of the flying will lenses fell off of a bar at the circus in omaha and died in one of the photographers got a picture. i was on the air. >> with so many networks now available in so many different ways of getting off -- information, isn't the news a bit or relevant? >> i think now, i walked into bloomberg last night and i was doing charlie rose. i like going over there. bloomberg has got a big stage with radio and internet in television and a lot of stuff going on. i said if i were starting over i would be looking at something like limburg, to go to work -- 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 were all in law school and they were going

to work. i was of a generation where you would get a job and you would be a life or. you would stay there forever. i was a little more dangerous. i thought maybe i can get the network to pay for me to see the world and i now realize that over waste on that account. i have seen more than that of it than i needed to but it was very exciting idea that you could get on a plane and fly somewhere and be on the air. i went to atlanta at the height of the civil rights movement and that is when nbc picked me up in california a. >> but by the time news comes to anchors, it is old news now. it has already been on "the huffington post." it's already been in so many different places. >> yeah, it change. technology changed and peter and i grew up his correspondence. we want to be reporters and now we find ourselves in the anchor service but fortuitously for all of us. technology changed of the satellite data possible for us to anchor from anywhere in the

world. we got an airplane and flew to the philippines when cory aquino was taking out marcus for example, a long way to go but it was very exciting story. we were in china. in 1989. >> you found yourself by chance in berlin. >> yeah and i was berlin, not entirely by chance. i didn't think the wall is going to come down but i thought it was a very good story. i won the lottery. i was the only one that was there that night and was laughing about it the other day because i like the outdoors and i don't have a formal board row. i tend to wear my patagonia and l.l. bean jackets when i go on the road. i had this kind of worn-out jacket and i was going on the air tonight the wall is coming down. i thought this is going to be around for a along a long time come this videotape so i got one of our correspondents who had a good-looking topcoat and i traded jackets with them. [laughter] so i show up in this very

handsome topcoat. >> bring me, because i watch that moment if you at the berlin wall. bring us back to what it was like to go there were a few come at least three that were tremendous. watergate, the berlin wall and reporting 9/11. i think the last one of course i think probably was one of the most difficult moments to report. if you can bring us back to what it felt like. those three stories. >> to put a quickly and larger perspective. i said it was the most difficult day in the most difficult days that came after that. i do think the biggest story of our lifetime is the fall of the soviet union and the redefinition of communism with the rise of china in the fall of soviet union and the liberation of eastern europe. that is still playing out. 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 racing around. we had more accidents than we had ever had before. i go through checkpoint charlie and report on the other side of them late in the afternoon on that thursday, the propaganda chief for the east was at a news conference and it was a typical communist bureaucratic news conference. he was sending off all these questions. i was exhausted because i had been up most of the time since i left on tuesday at noon. all of a sudden someone handed him a piece of paper and he said, his name was schakowsky. he read the paper and he said, the politburo has decided that residents of the ger can exit and return to any of the gates

in the wall. words to that effect and it was like hearing this theme come in from mars. the people in the room couldn't believe what they were hearing. and that man says thank you very much. i had an appointment to interview him right after the news conference so i went upstairs and got the camera in place and i said, just pull that piece of paper out again and we did to me again. let's talk about what it means. he pulled it out and he read it again and i said, that means residents of your country, citizens of the ger can leave any time that they want to through the wall. he said yes, that's what it means. iran downstairs and some of my print colleagues were standing there. they were trying to figure out, could this be? the wall is down. it's going to happen. we raced back through the wall, through the gate at checkpoint

charlie. the guard had given us a terrible time going in and out for the last two days. he kind of let us breeze through and i sat and i said, do you know what has happened even watching television? he said yes and i said what you think? he said through the interpreter i am not paid to think. he went on his way. that night by the time i got to brandenburg gate, people like him from the west and they were cheering on the young people on the other side of the wall who were very uncertain about whether they should come over the wall are not. one of my cameraman had been down it in navigated he came and had the first footage of people coming through the wall. they pored 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 backed in the studio 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.

>> you care to say something about watergate and the reporting at that moment? >> what it would be like today? >> no, watergate. >> watergate. will watergate was, it would be much different today. people would be making judgments 24/7 and the white house press corps, i look back on that as a model of tempered reporting. we reported what we knew. we have suspicions and things kept unraveling as we went along. but no one went on the air and said he is guilty and there was no way around it 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 finished with the evening news, at 7:00 at night from alone, 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 a reporter. so when i got on "the today show" the next morning i had news sources and new information and new ideas. it was a real constitutional crisis. the presidency was at stake in the country was deeply divided but what i always remember about it, i was in san clemente 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. and what i remember about it was, once this came out, this country even in the last -- of richard nixon, said he broke the law. he has got to go. they either set it to themselves or it was unspoken but everyone knew. i had been courting some republican senators during most of that year who were defenders of a president and they were conservative republicans. one of them called me at about 6:00 at night that the tapes

came out. and he said, tom you have been very patient with me. he said, it's over and we are coming to tell them that. we are going to make a call first and the white house told them not to calm that the president had made a decision that he was going to resign. that was a very dramatic time. there was no military coup of any time. people didn't hang on at the white house. i remember about two days later after president fort had been sworn and one of the white house staffers have been loyal to nixon came down the hallway to get something and burst into tears. i said ruth, what's wrong? she said, they told me to go get the president's papers and i don't know which president they are talking about. president border president nick sent. but we got through that transition. >> in closing, i'm wondering two things. first of all, when you look back, any regrets? and the stories that you feel

you could have told better? 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 covered the war at home as i often described and that was the big peaceable is going on. i wasn't there so i regret that. most people say that is nothing to regret given all the other things i've done in my life. the story that we could have told better -- >> told differently, told better? that you feel you did not tell? >> i think that the signs were there for the economic downturn. i don't think we did a very good job. i went back and looked and wrote about this in the book. on the night of the millennials change from 1999, none of us was

saying that this was likely to happen. "the new york times" wrote a pressing piece about how overheated the market was and what could happen. though we were worried about y2k. we hadn't seen 9/11 coming. the this spring before they had -- 9/11 i've seen the director of the fbi louis freeh because i was working on computer hate, story about these racists and bigots who were using, and it was very well organized, computers to spread hate. some people had been murdered as a result of their actions and i wanted the of the eye to cooperate with us on a documentary about how this all take crimes on the computer. and louis said that's not high on our her list of priorities. you guys ought to be looking at terrorism. i will never forget that.

that was like march before the 9/11 attacks and i walked out with my colleague and friend who is the president of nbc news and we kind of talked about that. he said maybe we should look into that but a kind of faded away. then 9/11 happened. >> how do these things fade away? >> it faded away because, and i think this was part of what is going on now. it wasn't tangible in a way. even though we have the attacks on khobar towers in the tanzania and kenya, we all were lulled into thinking they won't come here. i think part of the problem at the moment in this country is, you can't touch and feel and smell or her feel the hot wind of the debt that we are in this country. so people can put it out of their minds. it's not looming over them anyway. you can talk all you want about what it's going to cost her children and grandchildren but because it's not tangible but more of an abstract, don't think

it has the same impact. >> in closing, you write about journalism today and you say this about investigative journalism. you say without investigative journalism what would we know about the peoples revolt in egypt or long before that of watergate? the silent spring, aids, iran-contra, tiananmen square, islamic rage, nuclear proliferation, peace calamity and heroism? till tomorrow tomorrow i'm welcoming on this very stage -- who in a speech he gave at berkeley, commencement speech if you like commencement speeches he said this, i have often wondered why we need the phrase in best they can to journalism. isn't all journalism supposed to be investigative? isn't journalism without in investigative element little

more than gossip and isn't there enough gossip around already? >> i don't disagree with him. i have often said the same thing about investigative journalism. it's redundant and my opinion. i tell my friends in the print business when they complain about what they see on television, i want you to go to press tomorrow and onto the streets with only the front page. no sports news, no crossword puzzle, no cartoons, no entertainment guides. just the front page. eat your spinach folks and we will see how successful you are so journalism is a broad spectrum. i do believe that the culture of journalism will survive all these changes and how it's delivered. yes, salute lee. people have a consonant appetite for information about what is going on in their lives. walter isaacson has written this wonderful book about steve jobs and i were talking about the public journalism.

he said i'm buying print copies of books because i know they will survive and i want my children and grandchildren to see them and print for them. i don't know what happens to the icon of books that i buy. will i be able to retrieve those and will i pay attention in the archival way of those books? i think that is the first thing. harold morse by the way, talk about them in this book in the context of robert mcnamara. he is a brilliant documentarian. >> thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> thank you.

>> a couple of good questions? can we bring up the microphone? >> no questions? i think we have been at this for 90 minutes. go ahead. >> go ahead. >> hi mr. grow caw, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your words. i was very inspired. i was 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 a competition both among entry-level workers and among the more senior workers and

entry-level workers. i'm wondering if you could speak to your opinion on that? how did we move away from a cooperative workplace to a competitive work face and what effect has that had on the workplace and the productivity of all of us? >> you want to repeat that question? [laughter] >> can you make it shorter? beasher. >> the cooperative workplace. >> the cooperative workplace versus the competitive workplace. >> writing specifically your inspiring mentors and where did they go in the workplace today? are they still there but semi-just not finding them? >> i am not sure that i can answer that. i think they are still here. i think that is still exist, but what i think is that the information overload and what we see on the screen all day every day as 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 at one point in terms of choices that we had to make and we knew what they were going to be. i think that is not such her any more. >> thank you. >> if you could make your questions very tight. very terse, very tight. >> i'm bill mcgowan. i'm a print journalist and i spent some years both attending and covering conclaves of print journalists, the american society and newspaper editors, the newspaper association of america. and they bend themselves into pretzels every you're talking about how they have to find new ways to reach young people. and at a certain point, there is a limit. can you recommend a way for the news industry to get together with the educational system

come , somehow revive the gene for public affairs that seems to have somehow slipped out of journalism? >> that was a big internalism about whether not we should be trying to proactively encourage people. >> the newspaper industry in the news industry can only do so much. >> yeah and i honestly didn't think that was the mission of the newspaper did a bride -- to try to be of proactive agent. i think our job is to cover the news and raise hell. that is what i really think. i think other institutions had to then get in getting people or involved in public affairs. what i do think is that if you are reasonably nimble on the internet now, you can find almost any kind of organization that you want, including those that will pull you in to public policy discussion to make you part of a kind of cybergroup. ..

my honest advice is this, that obviously you have to get used to the new instrumentation and there has to be a strategy because a lot of it is leaving

the direction there will always be a place for someone who can write, someone who can express themselves coherently and explain complex issues in ways that people can take a way something that is meaningful and useful to them whether it comes off the internet or the printed page regional television we have far too much now of what is the school of journalism he's got everybody talking with our hands of the time, and it's kind of an improvisational. the well constructed sentence is important before the printed page or the internet. [applause] here's a short author interview from the c-span campaign 2012

bus as it travels the country. >> karen, political women in american democracy. how did you decide which essays to include in this work? >> mica with terse and i organized with a grant from the annenberg foundation on the project on american democracy at the university of notre dame that we would convene by our estimation the best scholars on the women and politics in the u.s. not only in the u.s. but scholars who were working on u.s. women and politics and so we brought together a range of people whose research we know well and convened for the two day conference at motor game after which at that conference we discussed all the manuscript that constitute the chapters of these books and had some commentary about it and discussion and then put it together as an edited collection

which the cambridge university press published in 2008. >> describe the role of the women in this book. >> there are several of the season the books of let me tell you first we are not looking at public policy per say. we are not looking at women in the executive because even in 2008 there were few women in the executives and not yet a major female candidate for the nomination for president of the major political party in the united states as women at the executive level which meant research wasn't there yet to the good discussion and finally we didn't address women in the judiciary so what did we address? we looked at the behavior of women in this voters and as candidates for office for both state and national office behavior of women within the political parties, the behavior of women once elected to the national office. we also have a few chapters that look at the gendered nature of u.s. political institutions as well as u.s. politics for women

in politics in the context of comparative politics that is what is the situation for the women in politics look like in the u.s. compared to the rest of the world. the picture is not so pleasant actually. we have one of the least advantageous electoral systems at the national level for women which is a single member of plurality system with some modification the state level electoral college we also have only two major political parties which are in for all in their internal construction have no clear formal instructions for becoming a candidate offer very little clear structural means by which women can work the party so to speak to increase the women of candidacies so there's a lot of disadvantages that women have in the united states and chief in elective office. -- in relation to the political party and as a woman voter, what are these findings related to the encouraging participation directly related to women?

>> it is interesting things on politics that make women the publicly government demographic category. there are more women than men in the united citizenry in the voting electorate. second, women have slightly higher registration rates than men and women turn out at a slightly higher percentage than men and the larger number of women combined with women heightened turnout weeks for a big electoral impact. women also are disproportionately democratic. this is true across all age groups and it's also true across all racial groups. so racial and ethnic groups. women still have a slight preference for the democratic party compared to men. so when we come into an election, things might turn out a range of issues that might attract women are very important. women are more likely than men to vote for the democratic presidential candidate. that has been the case since 1992. that cat has been between two

percentage points to five percentage points depending on what side you look at but nonetheless there is a democratic advantage in the electorate for the democratic party in general because of women. the absolute numbers that turnout in preference for the democratic party. now the issues that seem to mobilize women and attract their votes have to do with social welfare issues, have to do with foreign policy issues and also to a certain extent the so-called morality issue. but on these women vary in different directions. so on the table for issues like same-sex marriage women are much less opposed to that they are now in ferc simple. not by a huge margin but nonetheless there is a difference. women are more concerned with foreign policy security issues, and that can have an impact on the women's vote and also women are more concerned about social welfare issues. they conclude things like health care, unemployment, the scene of the economy, education.

>> with a woman candidate for president coming into the campaign, do you see those changing in 2012? were based on your research do you think that they will largely remain the same? >> i see no candidate coming to the presidential candidacy in 2012. there are only two on the list that on a bill of. sarah palin who has not yet declared and michelle bachmann who is doing very poorly right now in the early return or results and the republican party debate and in the polling numbers for her. i don't see either of them being the ultimate candidate on the party and on the democratic side, all things being equal, the current president barack obama will be the primary candidate so that will foreclose any opportunity for a woman in that party to come forward. so i see no presence for the presidential candidate in 2012. what we do say, however, is that some polling data and the most recent fight scene is only from

2008 coming in very early in 2008 presidential primary about 87% of americans are willing to say that they would vote for the qualified when -- coleman regardless of sex. they would be as willing to vote for a woman than to vote for a man. americans are more likely and more willing to vote for someone who is african-american or someone who is jewish president than they are for a woman coming and i think that number is slightly lower than has been the previous results because in 2008 there was a clear potential female candidate and that was hillary clinton on the democratic side ultimately failed to win the nomination. >> so what are some recommendations for women in the position running for office clacks does that matter, in your book? is that something that you catch on? >> we do look at the women's candidacy for the lower level office.

so, a couple of conditions. these are recommendations for when and select pages meek clear we only need about 4,000 women nationwide to contest and win the elections to have equitable representation in the senate and the house and the statehouses. there aren't that many elective offices of the legislative level at least that require that we need a million qualified women. i think we can find say 4,000, 4500 qualified women to run. so that's not the issue. the problem is not white women it is with political parties, and the unavailability of access to candidacies. both through the incumbency effect if we have, and as we do, the congress consisting of men, and most of them are incumbent stan very difficult for the new openings for the new candidates whether or not the candidates are women. and so part of it has to do with the political parties willingness to persuade the members of congress proceeded

members of congress to step down, a willing to support women, challenging incumbents within their own parties, willing to recruit women for office. right now the so-called big money people won the republican side are trying to recruit a governor christie from new jersey to enter the presidential nomination race on the republican side which so far at least he has refused to do but there are women that might be recruited. there are very good female governors on the republican side who might be. so at this point my argument is it is not the problem of women. it's the problem of the party and specifically i might add the republican party women are represented in the democratic party by the 2-123-margin over republicans. 64. >> you're welcome. the cicione campaign 2012 us visits communities across the country. to follow the troubles come of a set www.c-span.org/bus.

deepak chopra and leonard mlodinow debate with this audience or religion forms the best foundation for understanding the world. this is about 50 minutes.

>> good evening everyone. lenni ms. shelton zuckerman beebee byman of the founders of the synagogue and i here tonight for what should be very interesting evening. the building we are sitting in his 103-years-old and has always been a space of spirituality to give dr. chopra a little bit of an edge in tonight's discussion, but i am confident it will be very even-handed at the end of the day. the building has gone through a number of iterations that was originally the first or second home of the congregation for about 50 years, it was the home of the turner memorial church for 40 years and it's been the synagogue now going on seven

years and tonight's event is typical in that type of events we try to do. great people, very interesting topics and things that people are interested in. me to announce when i do this upcoming event, and generally i have done i have to tell you that i looked at the five next authors who are coming to light, six but we have bill bryson, jeffrey, justice stephen breyer, justice john paul stevens and dalia mckeithen so she does get some great stuff and i have to thank jack kiefer that. [applause] to let we are honored to have dr. deepak chopra who is the author of more than 60 books including numerous "new york times" bestsellers and among his many distinctions he'sfe