coverage of the savannahntrodu book festival in georgia the events are taking place downtown savannah at the trinity united methodist church and here is our lineup for the next several hours.to . .chief washington correspondent, scheduled to start his new show on cnn "the lead," in march. after that, evan thomas is next, "ike's bluff" delves into the

policy decisions made by president eisenhower that kept the cold war cold. live coverage concludes with well-known historian and cultural critic gary wills. the newest book is "why priest," and in that, the pretty ser prize winning historian questions whether the priesthood is a necessary component of christianity today. up next, al gore talking about his most recent book "the future," and this is live coverage on booktv on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] we have heard from james patterson and mbc's hoe do hoed

and we still have more than 30 renowned authors speaking at six different venues in and around telfair square today. it's an embarrassment of riches, and we must thank the city of savannah department of cultural affairs, festival sponsors, literati members and individual donors for their support. it is because of them that we are able to bring you these esteemed telfair authors for free. if you enjoyed today's speakers and would like to make a donation to the festival, we have provided yellow buckets at the door when you exit. please consider giving to our next years bucket list for next year's gifted scribes. before we get started i just have a couple of housekeeping notes for you. please take a moment to silencer cell phones.

i had to do that myself. immediately following his presentation mr. gore will be signing copies of his book. please go to the fellowship hald directly behind the pulpit. go out the doors and around and a right turn as you enter the exit sanctuary. there will be volunteers outside to direct you. just go through. mr. gore will be able to sign 400 books and you must have the numbered card that was included with your book purchase. you're signing order will correspond with your card number and you will be called in groups of 25. when you enter the sanctuary, volunteers distributed index cards and pencils. if you have any questions for mr. gore, please write them down as clearly and lets it we as possible.

at the conclusion of the presentation, volunteers will collect the cards and we will ask as many questions as time allows. you may notice camera setup at this venue. that is c-span's booktv. which is broadcasting the savannah book festival life to the nation today. [applause] this is the second year of our partnership and we really cherish their support. so, one be on your best behavior and two, let's give them -- c-span -- c-span another round of applause. [applause] please join me in thanking mr. and mrs. jack romano for

sponsoring this beautiful venue, the trinity united methodist church and many thanks to howard and mary morrison for sponsoring our next speaker, former vice president al gore. howard will you do the honors? [applause] , vice president of the united states, nobel peace prize recipient, oscar-winner, best-selling author.e any one of these superlatives alone would be enough to suggest that our next speaker is a force with which to be reckoned. but when combined into one individual, it is evident that al gore is a force of nature.n o

he has always been on the leading edge of promoting the internet as a tool for communication, and climate change is one of the greatest perils of our time.book, in his latest book, "the futurer technological and philosophical drivers changing our world.th if ever the bigi picture thinke, al gore explores how we mighth harness these epic change actions for the good. professionalized had it not been without controversy, his record of accomplishments speak to the life lived on the precipice of passion, purpose, and possibility. on behalf of the savannah book festival, it is by great honor to introduce to all of you al gore. [applause]

[cheers and applause] >> thank you very much, thank you. thank you very much. [applause] thank you so much. oh, it's so great to be here, and, thank you, for that very generous and warm welcome. it's great to be back in savannah, one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world. i always enjoy coming here. i want to thank howard morrisson for that very kind introduction and we've had a chance to visit this morning, and howard and mary are great folks here and contribute so much to this community. congratulations to the savannah

book festival in this sixth year. it keeps on getting better and growing and people are excited about it. i got friends here, andy wright used to work for me in the white house, and so as a lawyer, and i'm glad he and his family settled here in savannah. thank you to the trinity united methodist church for the beautiful venue, and the books, ladies and gentlemen, independent local bookstores are part of the bedrock of our whole civilization so let's support them. [cheers and applause] so i want to tell you about that book, "the future: six drivers of global change." i've always been fascinated with those who try to look over the horizon and see what's coming at us, and back when i was a young congressman, i had the privilege of chairing a group called the

congressional clearinghouse on the future, and it was started by a north carolina congressman, charlie rose, the other charlie rose we say now. [laughter] charlie has passed on, but he was a great man, and he asked me to chair it in my second term in the congress, and i had a chance to invite to the congress, oh, gosh, al and john and buck and margaret and carl, and first one, and then the other, hundreds of them, and it was a wonderful experience. in in case, i learned from them, and i have been trying over the years to try to use some of those techniques, and about eight years ago, i was in a conference making a speech in europe, and somebody asked me,

what are the drivers of global change? i gave an answer i thought was adequate, and i thought it was a little better than that, of course -- barbara dafoe whitehead but when -- but when i got on the plane to fly back to the u.s., that question nagged at me a little bit, and i took out my computer, and i started outlining a better answer, and that ended up becoming something of an obsession. a couple years after that, it turned out that that outline had some value in the real world. i had co-founded an investment company called generation investment management, with my partner, david blood. i wanted to call it blood and gore, but -- [laughter] i hope you won't think less of me when i tell you that i really did want to call it that. [laughter]

we used this outline as one of the inputs for our investment models, and it has worked pretty well, and then a couple years ago, it had grown to be so elaborate, i decided to turn it into a book, and i had a scoping exercise with some of the smartest people i could find who spent two days trying to sort of look over the horizon and help to get all of this in speer specktive, and i asked one of them at the start of it, kind of an emotional question, how do you feel about the future? he said, i feel fine, and i didn't think that was very helpful, but -- [laughter] , but it reminded me of a story i first heard 35 years ago when i was a young congressman representing 25 rural counties in tennessee, and on a saturday night, i had a town hall meeting all day long, and i was driving

back in the evening to my farm, and i was listening on the car radio to the grand old opry, and back in those days, there was a wonderful comedian named cousin minny pearl, and a few of you remember her. she was the one with the price tag still on her straw hat, calico dress, and she told a story about a farmer involved in an accident, and he suffered damages, and he went to court, sued the driver of the other vehicle. that other driver hired a lawyer who put this farmer on the witness for cross-examine, and he asked the farmer, now, isn't it true that immediately after this accident, you said, i feel fine? the farmer said, well, it's not that simple. you see, i was taking my cow to town in the back of my truck, and this fellow came driving across the center of the highway -- >> the lawyer said, i object,

it's the middle of the trial here. we don't want a long and involved story, just answer the question, yes or no. did you or did you not say immediately after the accident i feel fine? >> the farmer said, well, i was leading up to that. [laughter] you see, i was taking my cow to town -- [laughter] in the back of any truck, and this fellow came driving across the center of the highway and ran right smack dab into the truck and knocked it over, threw me out, the cow out, i was on one side, the cow on the other, and a highway patrolman looked at the cow, and said, oh, she's suffering. pulled out the gun and shot her between the eyes. [laughter] then he came around to my side of the truck, and said, how do you feel? i said, i feel fine! [laughter] i think, honestly, that -- [laughter] that sometimes our attitudes

about the future are a little bit like that compared to what? [laughter] we are now living in a time of absolutely revolutionary change, and the power of these changes and the simultaneous changes is something we have never seen before. never have so many revolutionary drivers of change been coming at us at the same time. i want to run through all six of them, briefly, and then i look forward to your questions, and i'll do my best to answer them and then i'll sign your book, and i did a presigning. the ink is barely dry, so i look forward to visiting with each one of you who comes through over at fellowship hall. to begin with, talk about change

itself. we are used to experiencing change of a particular kind. slow, steady, incremental change, linnier change. yesterday, it was not much different from today, and tomorrow will be no different from today. there are changes that are bursting forth piling up the potential for change without anything seems to happen much because the seeming change can be held back by a barrier of sorts or old habits and customs, and then when it reaches critical mass, this potential change can breakthrough the barrier, and there it is, all of the sudden. that's sometimes called emergent change, and back in those days when i was a young congressman,

one of the scientists that came to talk with us that had a big impact on me was the man from belgium, short, balding, born in russia three months before the russian revolution in 1917, and he discovered a new law of nature, law of dynamics, the physical law that says systems break down over time. think about a smoke ring. it starts as a coherent donut and then as the molecules separate and the energy dispates, it just breaks apart. everything is that way, and some -- some systems, it occurs quickly, and others it takes place over a longer period of time.

he discovered what's the opposite of that. he studied open systems that have energy flowing into it and through it and out again, and what he fund was that when the flow of energy into an open system increases enough beyond a certain threshold, two things happen, the pattern of the system breaks down, but here's the surprising part, then the system reorganizes itself at a higher level of complexity. the whole feel of complexity, science came from that discovery, and the way we use the word "emergence," the phrase "emergent phenomena" really comes from that discovery so think for a minute about what happened over the last 20 # years with the internet. when bill clinton and i went into the white house in 1993,

there were 50 sites on the worldwide web. now there's a trillion of them. look at what happened to newspaper all over the world. dallas part of -- that's part of the breakdown of the old pattern, but now we have facebook, twitter, and it keeps going. i spent time in silicon valley, and there's 20 # new companies out there that reached a ball dollar evaluation just in the last year and a half. our world is changing dramatically, some of the old is breaking down, and fading away and dispating, but the new patterns are quite complex and challenging and they bring a lot of changes. these six drivers of global change are all emergent changes. they have been building up for awhile, and now they are all kind of happening statement.

let's take them one by one. number one, chapter one. earth inc, a new interconnected, global economy that operates as if it is a single entity. we've been seeing the outsourcing of jobs, and we've been seeing the connection of the supply side, and now we have virtual factories with supply lines running to hundreds of countries and almost every business has to see its competitive landscape in the global dimension. earth inc.has a different relationship to national government and national economic policies now, a different relationship to labor and capital and natural resources, the three classic factors of production. look, for example, one of the changes that illustrates this

new really of effort inc. , and normally after a recession when we get a recovery and growth resumes, the jobs come back, and that's the way it's always been, but in the last couple of recessions, it had not happened that way because we now have this gloanl reality, and -- global reality, and some businesses that lay people off in the recession, they are not hiring them back the way they used to. some of them, yes, but we now have outsourcing in a completely different way, and when a business is faced with the need to give employees a raise, well, if they can just ship the job overto some other country, then

it's so easy now they are doing that. it's not just outsourcing but robo sourcing, the word used to describe a brand new level of automation that's different from what we've seep in the past. you know, for hundreds of years, since those days of the l urges dites. you remember that story. they organized people to smash apart the jobs, and we always snickered at him and the economic evidence as proven time and again that new technologies almost always create more new jobs than they displace, and that's been the pattern, but there are an increasing number of economists who are now asking whether or not that is still the pattern, and here's the difference they point to.

flood warnings -- technology not only extends our physical capacities, but also our cognitive capacities. it's not so significant that a super computer won jeopardy, but i was impressed, and a few years ago, one captured the international chess championship, but in addition to the niche applications, now a lot of these intelligent machines, algorithms and robots do significant things. there's one algorithm law firms use to make it possible for a single first year lawyer working with this computer algorithm to do the same amount of research that used to require 500 first year lawyers, and they don't -- he doesn't make as many mistakes.

way fewer mistakes, in fact. the way we used to think about a situation like that is new and unusual, but we always assume those other 499 lawyers that go eat get a job somewhere else, but when the other law firms start using and that other businesses, then my point is we are seeing the combination of outsourcing and robosourceing really transform our economy. the middle class, let's be candid about this, and the united states, for quite some time now, has been really struggling. the middle class jobs have been kind of hallowed out, and, by the way, this trend is not just happening in our country. it's in europe, japan, and it's also in china, and in india. you may have heard of the chinese company called fox con

that makes the smart phone and digital devices. they announced over the next three years, they are installing one million robots. now, these young chinese men and women who have migrated in such large numbers from the impoverished rural areas of china from the centers of manufacturing, closer to the export terminals, what are they going to do when they compete with these row -- robots, and the robots get smarter and the algorithms and thinking machines get smarter all the time. moore's law, which everybody knows about, making the computers twice as fast every 18-24 months for the same dollar. you don't have to keep going in that pattern for very long before they get in much smarter than they are now, and they are now beginning to take on tasks

that we have always assumed would remain the unique province of our species. we are talking now about economic policies in our country that represent a pattern that really is rooted in the past, and, again, the jobs are not coming back in the same way. in a minute, i'll tell you where the income is going and some of the reasons why, but i'll move on from earth inc because i got five more. if you want to know more about any of them, i have a suggestion on where you can go for more information. [laughter] carpet two, the second driver of global change, the emergence of the global mind. digital networks including principally the internet, a couple with digital devices that connect us all, the thoughts and feelings of billions of people

instantaneously, and connects them not only to one another, but to the intelligent machines and to intelligent devices and computers that are getting more and more common all over the world, and sensors that are being embedded in the physical world at an incredible rate, and connecting us to vast data base with all the knowledge ever compiled in the history of human civil -- civilization available to us at our fingertips. it changes the way we think. it really does, just as every significant communications advance in history has brought about changes in our thinking, back when the ancient greeks perfected the phonetic alphabet,

all of the sudden, the symbols used in written language were not representative of the ideas they conveyed, not little stylized pictures, but they were symbols with no meaning at all in and of themselves, but when you cruise -- use them in combination, we have meanings to them, and it's miraculous in a way to read in books and pick up these symbols just instantaneously. we organized our brains to do that. well, there's a lot of people who think that the reason why ancient greece marked a point of departure in civilization was that when people organized their minds in that new way, all of the sudden, what came out? philosophy and dramatic theater and complex ideas like democracy. fast forward 1800 years after

ancient athens and the printing press, all the knowledge was distributed throughout society triggering a wave of literacy, and people began to get access to knowledge of the ancients, and then a demand grew for contemporary works and shakespeare and journals that became newspapers and, pretty soon, people said, you know, that lord there don't know a thing about what's going on in our village here. we have to make decisions for ourselves, and the reformation began to challenge the primacy of the medieval church, and the whole world was made over, and within just a few decades, the voyages of discovery began, and when columbus came back from the baja mas, there were 11 print editions just sailing around europe and opening people's imaginations, and within two generations, the whole world had

been discovered, circumnavigated and everything changed. now, these changes we're undergoing now, if you think about how powerfully the printing press transformed the world, just imagine what the challenges are that are being caused by the emergence of the global mind. 50% of people with smart phones look at them first thing in the morning before they get out of bed. be careful driving to work because the people work on them while they are driving in the other lanes, and you've probably be in dinner conversations with friends and loved ones when all the sudden everything stops when somebody looks up what you're talking about. you have been in rooms where nobody's talking because everybody's looking at a different device, so these kinds of changes are quite remarkable,

but remember, we're not only connecting to the data bases and to ourselves, but all of these sensors. i'll give you a quick example. look, dairy farmers in europe, when you use these milking machines, and the force feeding and the new diets and everything, the cattle, the cycle compresses a little bit, so if they want to breed the dairy cattle to get calfs, they really got to be on their toes. they embedded, put digital sensors in the cattle, and when the cow comes in heat, she texts the farmer now. [laughter] i'm not making this up. it's the first example of interspee ceases texting. there are -- interspecies texting.

there are a lot. this brings with it the fraternal twins of opportunity and peril. there are some risks that we need to manage as we all move our lives into the global mind. if you go right now on your smart phone to dictionary.com and look up a word, without you knowing it, that business will put 234 small computer programs or cookies on your smart phone that tracks your movements around the internet from now on. there's a lot of businesses that do that. we have a stalker economy out there. they compile digital files on everybody, and most of it's benign. they sell it to advertisers to better target the ads that they send you so you'll be more likely to want to see what they

are showing you, but they are selling them to other people now too. there's been examples where this causes problems, and the hackers are getting into the files, and foreign governments -- many of our high-tech businesses here in the u.s. have been penetrated by hackers who steal their intellectual property. one business in silicon valley lost a billion dollars worth of multiyear research in a single weekend, and a lot of these businesses that are hacked and penetrated don't even want to talk about it. some of them don't report it because they don't want people to know. it's becoming a very serious problem. by the way, now the hackers cannot only get information,

they can make changes in the physical world to power plants, and they can sabotage things. it was a computer worm that destroyed those gas centerfuges in iran, and, unfortunately, our country is highly vulnerable because, again, weave moved into the global mind and increasingly, our processes and factories and machineries and infrastructure are connected to it. again, i have to move on. there's so much more to have in this that needs to be explored. chapter 3, in the dimension of political and economic power, the organization of the world is undergoing the biggest changed that we've seen in 500 years, since the europeans discovered the new world. the united states has been the

unquestioned leader of the world since the end of world war ii, and especially since the collapse of communism in 1989, and we are proud as americans that people in the rest of the world really look to the u.s. and are inspired by the values that we have demonstrated in our country, and they want to be like us. in a few years, china will be the most powerful economy in the world. they recently passed us as the largest trading nation. our relative strength seems to have been declining. now, it doesn't have to continue. by the way, one of the themes of this book that's particularly emphasized in chapter 3 is that the united states of america is and remains the only nation that is capable of providing

leadership to the world. i've been doing book interviews with authors -- journalists in foreign countries, and sometimes i'll say that, and they say, well, that's just an american point of view. no, it's not. i'm proud of my country. yes, i'll plead guilty to that for sure, but you just tell me what other country has the potential to do it. the european union has its hands full, doesn't have a president or executive. china does not have the perceived moral authority that will induce the rest of the world to ever in the foreseeable future look at them as a leader. they don't have democracy. you know, they corrupt and they have all of these problems, and who else is there? at a time when we're facing these six major drivers of change, the world -- these are global issues, and we have to confront them in the global dimension, and that requires leadership.

we, as americans, have a particular responsibility in my view, and a particular challenge to help restore the leadership potential of the united states of america because the shift in power relationships, the chapter's called "power in the balance" is not only taking place shifting from west to east and china is the bilgest champ, but there's others, but there's also resourcing power to emergent sensors of economic strength all over the world in sound in istanbul and johannesburg. in fact, the aggregate size of all of the economies in the developing world is now larger than the size of all the economies in the advanced industrial nations. the world is changing. inside the united states we have

seen a shift in power here as well. as a matter of fact, ladies and gentlemen, and i use this phrase in a considered way. our democracy has been hacked. the phrase -- the word "hacked," you know, is a computer word where the operating system of the computer is taken over remotely and make the computer do things you don't want it to do. well, our operating system was handed to us by our founders in the constitution, and it's not working the way it should. i speak as one who served as an elected official in the federal government for 24 years, and i've watched it all my life, and i want to jigs very simply explain what the difference is today compared to the way it's supposed to work.

back in those years when i was listening to the ground old opri on the car radio, i would have these town hall meetings regularly. i was first elected in 1976, and i started going to all of the county courthouses in these counties, and then i went to the smaller communities, and people would come, and you remember the norman rockwell painting of a man standing up in the town hall meeting? it was like that. i'm telling you. i don't want to sound corny about it, but i can barely find the words to describe the genuine thrill in my heart that i felt when i was able to play the role our founders carved out for a member of the hoys of representatives. listening to them, doing my best to understand what could be done to improve their lives, hearing their suggestions on what needed to be changed, and then going to the seats of government in washington, d.c. and fighting on their behalf, and learning stuff

that might cause me to vote differently than they would necessarily expect, and then going back explaning why, telling them what i learned on their behalf. i -- it was an amazing experience, and, honestly, again, i don't want to sound corny, but it was -- it just filled my heart with joy. no kidding. it was wonderful. now, here is the difference. here's the difference today. we've got good people up there that are now trapped in a bad system. the main thing is the role of big money. back in the days when our country was founded, everything was on the printing press, you know, and people could easily go and get the knowledge they wanted, and they could contribute their own ideas, and if somebody agreed with them, they might tell their friends, and it's like a google search. it starts kind of bubbling up. thomas payne walked out his

front door in philadelphia. he was a imgrant from centerfuges land, but he could think and write clearly, walked out the door and opened 12 shops in 10 blocks and printed common sense in 1776, and it was the harry potter of the late 18th century. [laughter] it helped to ignite the american revolution. well, starting in the last third of the 20th century, television displaced the printing press as the main way we communicate in our democracy. s # -- it had a profound impact. it's not a two-way conversation. the printing press, you get what you want to know and contribute your own ideas. with television, you can talk back to the tv screen, but it doesn't hear you because you're you're -- unless you call if on the c-span show. that's an exception there.

my point is mostly it's a one way flow of information, and it's mostly sponsored by large advertisers, but they are increaseingly sponsoring political ideas as well. when they show coal ads on tv, you think they are trying to convince you to say to your spouse or partner, honey, i'm going to go to the store and buy us some coal. no. they are trying to convince you to adopt their political point of view, but now what happens when thomas payne today with revolutionary ideas that can make everything better walked out his front door and goes to the near education tv station and says, okay, i've got this video on common sense. when do i go on the air? i'm ready. well, of course, you know what happens. they say, well, you know, it'll take $10 million for a half hour, whatever the cost is, and so the only people that are able

to communicate with the masses in the way that it happens today on television, are ones with huge amounts of money, mostly corporations and special interests, and so when a congressman or a senator wants to run for reelection, they've got to get on that tv. they've got to buy those 30-second ads, and they are expensive. they get more expensive every year. where do they get the money? well, they go to the special interests because the special interests are waiting for them to come. anonymous billionaires, and, now, the ones just elected went up to the orientation. here's what they told them. you will need x million dollars by the time you run for re-election.

we've calculated the number of days between now and then so you got to raise $12, 15, 20, $25,000 every single day between now and then. take the rest of the day off, but tomorrow, we have special room set up with lists of special interests and lobbyists and rich people, and you -- they spend five to six hours a day making those calls. now, he's the thing. i described the feeling that i had to, you know, make in that -- our system work the way it's supposed to. everybody's who's done that is inspired by it. if you have to spend five to six hours a day begging for money from rich people and special interests, human nature being what it is, you know that the next time they vote, they are going to think about what the impact's going to be on their telephone calls and on the people they meet at these fundraisers.

laming, we need -- ladies and gentlemen, we need to reclaim the integrity of our democracy. we need to overturn -- [applause] we -- [applause] we need to overturn citizens united. corporations are not people. [applause] you know that. we all know that. we need to require that these people making anonymous contributions disclose who they are so that we can see what they are trying to influence them to do. it's an important and urgent matter. a lot is at stake. now, i'm hopeful because just as we've gone from the printing press to the television age, we are now seeing the emergence of the internet age and even though it's still in infancy and television is dominant, there's

individual bloggers affect the course of debate. we are seeing young people to use the internet to be involvedded in their communities than any previous generation, so we've got some good and positive developments that are going to help us. they are putting wind in our sail, but we, the people, as the president reminded us the other night, the other day in his inauguration, we the people have the main responsibility for doing this. now, let me move on because i'm going to run out of time. chapter 4 is entitled "outgrowth," and we're growing, our civilization is growing, effort inc is growing. .. that is how many people we have

added in the first 13 years of the century. and we will add another billion in the next 13 years. and in the 14 years after that we will add yet another billion. when i was born a little over 2 billion, not that old. i'm getting on up there but it has quadrupled in less than a century.it q and it's going to level ofdrfthn somewhere at about 10 alien ande cities are growing.10il there is an urbanization trend that's incredible growing, urbanization trends is incredible and the economic activity is growing so rapidly that putting pressure on some key resources like underground water supplies, freshwater, topsoil, in many areas my father's generation responded to fdr's challenge to conserve the soil. in many places around the world

including the midwest, we are losing topsoil at an unsustainable rate and our own underground aquifers are going down several meters year, out of sight and out of mind, nothing is being done about it but with this growth we have got to do something about it. here is the main point i want to make about growth. growth has become the holy grail. every nation's economic policy is focused on bringing growth. every corporation's business plan is focused on growth. if growth is just sort of seen as the same thing as progress, growth is good and lack of growth is bad, that is the general assumption, it matters, then, what we mean by growth. what is growth?

it turns out it is a very specific definition that goes back to the 1930s, a man named simon kuznatz was one of the economists credited for it, who came up with gdp, gross domestic product. and that is our conference, the ddt's growing -- that is the big one. it is not, we are in trouble. it is interesting that in 1937 and thereafter, he said thank you very much for this honor, but i need to tell you something. please do not use gdp as a guide for economic policy. why did he say that, he understood it thoroughly and pointed out that it leaves out a

lot of important things and if we don't pay attention to what is left out of gdp we are going to get in trouble and that is what we did and we have gotten into trouble. what does it leave out? he called them externalities', like george orwell, if something is an externality you are saved ignoring and forgetting about it and negative and positive, negative include pollution, not on the balance sheet, not in the national accounts, out of sight, out of mind, forget about it if you can. we can not anymore. there are positive externalities'. here is what that phrase describes. if we invest in music and art and culture and education and mental health care and community centers and family services,

that is an expense. when the benefits start rolling back into society with more vibrant communities and better educated young people, that is not measured, that is a positive externality. it is one of the reasons that we in our country are chronically underinvesting in public goods that make life better for everyone, but it doesn't show up on the balance sheet. let's just cut this cut that out, they are cutting out all the benefits that come back and make the economy stronger as well. what else is missing from the definition of growth? the depletion of the underground water, depletion of topsoil, depletion of minerals, what else? the distribution of income. that is a big one. this is a big one. because if all of the extra income goes to the very top,

that is counted as a win. gdp has gone up, or a. but the middle class is not cheering about that. and in fact, here are the statistics. since the great recession of 2008, not all, 93% of all the extraand national income has gone to the top 1%. that is not an occupy wall street slogan, that is reality. and that is what has been happening. we in the united states have an economy today where we are more unequal than either egypt or tunisia. the inequality is growing. the middle class has been struggling. and again, the gains have gone right up to the very top.

we can change that but we have got to have a clear understanding of what we mean by growth so that when we implement our economic policies we do so in a way that helps the great majority of the people. i will give you one example that illustrates this and i am not picking on this family, it is a great family, just using them as an example. spam and bud walton founded walmart, and their errors and the next generation between the two of them have five children and one daughter in law. the six individuals now have greater combined net worth than 1 hundred million americans, the bottom third of our country and again it is not the waltons's fault. it is the result of the policies that are producing this pattern.

inequality is growing in europe, japan, inequality is growing in china, growing in indiana and one of the reasons is the emergence of outsourcing and robotssourcing that gives us a macro economic challenge and let me explain what i mean by that. since the early part of the 20th century, henry ford doubled his employees's wages so they could buy the cars they were making an since mass advertising started stimulating demand, the manufacturing of want they call it, we have had a consumer demand economy so that the middle class gives wages and salaries so that they can go to stores to buy goods and services and that keeps priming the pump and keeping the economy going. the consequences of growing inequality and stagnating wages extend beyond the fact that it defends our sense of fairness

and is contrary to what we think our country ought to be like, it also threatens the continued vibrancy of the economy because of the middle-class can continue providing that demand, we get into real trouble and that is beginning to happen. let me go to chapter 5, the reinvention of life and death. one of the most powerful revolutionary drivers of global change is the revolution in biology, genetics, genomics, the microbiome, the making of the human brain, new material sciences, 3d printing raise, molecular manipulation, we are now acquiring the ability to change the fabric of life itself and to change the makeup of

solid matter. brand new life forms are being created that did not appear in nature. those from the south know what kudzu has done and i'm not saying these microscopic critters are like that, these technologies say they haven't control and i'm sure they do. but we need to pay attention to these. anyone have spider goats? i didn't think so but i want to tell you about putter goats. spider silk if you have enough of it is incredibly valuable, stronger than steel, has all the qualities that spider silk has, but you can't have much of it, you can't farm spiders. they are aggressive and cannibalistic and the other two

reasons i don't want to farm spiders. here's what you can do. you can take their jeans and splice them into goats and they look like goats but they secrete the spider silk through their editors with their milk. everybody okay with that? [laughter] >> somebody said creepy. 3-peat is not fear. creepy is pre fear. something going on but you don't know what is, but it might be something we need to worry about. in truth, there are so many magnificent blessings coming our way out of this life science

revolution, cures for diseases that have caused suffering since time immemorial, alleviation of conditions that we never imagined. just yesterday they announced a new device that can help some blind people begin to see by sending the signal straight to the brain and so many wonderful things, but again, we need to participate in making choices about how we are going to use these new powers. we are now in charge of evolution. it is hard pressed to think of evolutionary time scales but we are now in charge of it. what will happen when parents are given as they will be in some countries, may be here, the ability -- what they would like to see in their children, hair

color, eye color, if you want to dial the intelligence up, parents are competitive and so our nations and china has announced its determination to be the world's genetic engineering superpower and i described in this book what they are doing. it is mind blowing. matching children with professions they may be genetically most inclined to do well in, trying to isolate genes that will be markers for more intelligence. we have already seen modifications with pharmaceuticals. it is a national challenge how many of these young kids feel like they have to take concentration enhancing medications to compete in school. what happens when there is a genetic wave to do that?

more specifically, one of the things that have caused us problems in economic policy is the focus on short-term objectives at the expense of long-term? if we take that approach to these genetic choices and we focus on short-term gains with genetic modifications not taking into account what the long-term evolutionary effect could be, that wouldn't be a good thing so we have got to accelerate the accumulation of wisdom to make the incredibly challenging choices that now lie ahead of us. finally, and i will take the shortest amount of time on this one, the sixth driver of global change you would be surprised in a book by me you didn't have as one of the six drivers of change the climate crisis and it does and is the biggest challenge

that we face. earth inc. the bent on carving baseball field for 85% of the energy that is used and when you by fossil fuels you put global warming solutions into the atmosphere. it traps heat. it obeys the laws of physics. you can't amend the laws of physics. we now put every single day, we put ninety billion tons of .. apped the cases of cholera, used to be such a big killer and overlaid it on the map of the city's sewers system and traced them all to a single pump on broad street and not long after that louis pasteur discovered that bacteria was

causing the problem. they connected the dots. we have been putting all this pollution into the atmosphere as it is a sewer and the aggregate amount of man-made global warming pollution that is a bear now attracts enough extra heat every day to equal the energy in four hundred thousand hiroshima atomic bombs going off every day. it is the big planet but that is a lot of energy and we can now connect the dots. look at 2012 last year in our country. it was the hottest year ever measured in the united states. we had those giant fires out west. and in the southeast. we had the worst outbreak of west nile virus ever, 48 of the 50 states in one community in

texas, the police department put out a public appeal for people to stop dialing 911 when they got a mosquito bite. that is true. we had 61% of the country in the drought and parts of georgia still in dropped. 1 million head of cattle driven out of texas. no one expected them to ever return. have of the north polar icecap melted last summer. the jet stream is getting all haywire. $110 billion of climate related disaster damage in this country last year. and superstorm sandy, devastating the manhattan and new jersey. that is when i put out my movie, the most common criticism i heard was from people who said he showed an animation of sea water going into the world trade center memorial site. how irresponsible is that?

it happened at the end of last october, way ahead of schedule. in spite of the fact the we had all these climate related disasters, in a year when we had more presidential campaign debate than ever in any campaign in history not one single reporter asked one single question of any of the candidates in any of the debate about the climate crisis. that is pathetic. as a commentary on the quality of the democratic discourse. we have the logo when the cruise ship is coming back into port and we have the special logo and wall-to-wall coverage when a rogue cop is being hunted and that is news, but we need to address this climate crisis. is way past time to do so.

in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, all six of these drivers of global change are happening simultaneously and we as human beings, we particularly as citizens of the united states of america have a lot of work to do. if the future is a priority, if we care about the world we are handing off to our children and grandchildren, we have got decisions to make, we have choices we need to confront, we have opportunities to develop. i am an optimist and i am more optimistic after researching and writing this book but my optimism is based on the assumption that we as human beings have the capacity to rise to big challenges and now is such a time.

lincoln said as our cases knew we must think and new. the occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. we must do some from ourselves and then we will save our country. for all is a norse word describing voluntary slavery. we need to free ourselves from outdated ideas that are holding us back. aristotle wrote the end of making defines its nature. should we god forbid fail to rise to this challenge and we see these sweeping changes bring about the end of civilization, what will that say about our nature? who are we as human beings? are we just destined to be proof that the combination of an opposable thumb and neocortex was a big mistake? are we destined to destroy our

own future? i refuse to believe it, i refuse to accept it, i believe in humanity, i believe in our creator, i believe in our capacity to make the future what it should be and to make it worthy of our children. thank you very much for coming here today. i appreciate it. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. i will sign your book now. [applause] >> thank you, savannah. i am going to do questions, right? thank you very much.

[inaudible conversations] >> we don't? well, i am going to sign your books now. thank you so much. all right. [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching live coverage of the sixth annual seven and a book festival in georgia on booktv on c-span2. more in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. >> these are books being published this week.

the age of medicine:electric life at the age of modern america. in the terror courts, rough justice at guantanamo bay, just reagan, supreme court correspondent for the wall street journal reports on legal issues surrounding the prosecution of alleged terrorists by military commission. former boston globe reporters dick ware and gerard o'neil recount the life of infamous boston gangster and fbi informant.

look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> if you cut demand for somebody's product per day by 50% you must have crushed prices. here's what happens. the average amount medicare reimburses. day in a hospital has grown by 5 x. sixty% decline of the number of patients, 5 x increase in the price. we shall be so lucky. i want to be in that business. there's another statistic which is entirely sort of irrelevant but fascinating. hospitals tell medicare what their costs are so that medicare

can compare the price they paid to hospitals costs. and those 30 years that medicare increased the price by five times hospitals reported that their costs had increased three times so the interesting thing is our demand in any industry that would be devastating. medicare paid five times more but the hospitals say they're getting reimbursed 40% of their costs down from 70%. one of my most put it is you have to stand outside to see this, medicare insists that hospitals perform medicare services at a loss and that loss has been growing. you can see the numbers the gross margin number, that has been growing. since medicare patients are the bulk of our hospital patients nobody has successfully explained and medicare never asked why people still building

off of this. and you want to reduce volume, not increase volume. there's a lot of that in health care. a lot of things in health care, if i get off of the island and think in terms of the real world, if gm's price declines they would not be increasing, they would be building factories. i want to spend one more moment on prices because prices are the circulatory system of the economy and one of the things most and best misunderstood about health care. these things that actually drive the way human beings receive service. one of the things we assume is that we pay for health care. how do we pay for health care? one of the arguments i am making today is how we pay drive the type of care we're getting. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> psychologist heidi squier kraft joined the navy in 1996.

she was deployed to iraq in 2004 with her twin son and our xvi month-old. mrs. kraft discusses her experience now from the savannah book festival. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> okay. are we on?

great. welcome, everybody. good morning. this is the sixth annual said than a book festival. my name is linda schirmer horn. there are 36 doctors speaking today at six different venues are around the square and all of the authors will sign their books at the book sales center in the middle of the square following their presentation. part of the proceeds of the book sales support the book festival. we hope you will visit the book sales can't, pick up a few books, meet some of the authors, have a chat, get your books signed. all of the events are free of charge and open to the public thanks to the support of the city of savannah, department of

cultural affairs, festival's sponsors, individual donors. if you enjoy today's presentation you have an opportunity to make a donation in yellow buckets as you exit the venue. take a mullah to make sure your cellphones are turned off. in the not have cameras set up in this venue, c-span's booktv is broadcasting the savannah book festival live to in nation today.the nation today. [applause] round of applause. please be on your best behavior. you are representing savannah. this beautiful day the trinity united methodist church is sponsored by mr. and mrs. jack

romano. our speaker this hour, former navy psychologist heidi kraft is sponsored by mr. and mrs. john pepper. dr. kraft received a ph.d. in clinical psychology in 1996. daring her psychology internship at drake medical center she joined the navy as an in-flight specialist and clinical psychologist. in february of 2004 when her twin working months old she was deployed in iraq for seven months with a marine surgical unit. her book, rule number 2, is about her experience in iraq. today she is a consultant for the navy and the marines post-traumatic stress disorder treatment programs, please

welcome dr. heidi squier kraft. [applause] >> good morning. so i have been doing a fair amount of speaking over the last few years and i have to say i am quite certain this is my first talk in which the vice president warmed up the audience for me. it may not be the last but it is the first and i wish he was here to hear me say that and and respectfully say thank you, sir, for such a good job. it is an honor to be with you today. how many veterans of the country's military do we have in the audience today? thank you very much for your

service. [applause] >> i was sharing with my terrific sponsors last night doing this many speeches sort of become desensitized but sometimes it is still emotional and the reasons for that emotion are sometimes obvious like memorial day. other times it can be things that are upcoming that sort of take me by surprise. baseball season just started. did everyone know that? the skilled players have arrived in spring training. we will see if that is a big deal in san diego or not. but here we are. baseball season starting. this makes me think of a young man, very special person and one of our country's he rose close to nine years ago now he died, sacrificing his life for his fellow marines. he was a young man i had the privilege to know for only a few

moments holding his hand. they were moments that occurred in an austere field hospital in western iraq. we didn't speak. he couldn't speak. i didn't know him, not really. and because i have come to know his family, much more than a marine, a hero, a beloved son. and baseball player, wonderful experience at his high school including a batting average of 408 which was still record. and joseph the marines. and finding life comes full circle, it was two years ago on memorial day that my 8-year-old hit his first out of the park home run and taking a picture of

him as he was coming into home plate and all his friends jumping up and down waiting for him, i was testing jason's mother. she said i would give anything to see jason strike out, like i said, baseball season. how do we go through the experiences and not be changed? we are changed. those of you in the room who i asked to see your hands, those who i honored by being here today, you are veterans of our past and present service and proud families, they are all change. we as patriots and support them and have supported them through what is now law war are changed too. i hope there is one thing you take out of me today, the change

is the whole point. change is what we are afraid of, what we dread and what we cling to, what we depend on when everything else is fleeting, change is what matters and the stories behind that change deserve to be told so together as a nation we can celebrate them, cry for them, learn from them and move on. i believe that is the reason i'm here with you today. there's almost always a reason. i hope that after today you as members of this very proud patriotic community will think of your service members and their brave families and maybe look at them with slightly different eyes. i hope that my words might encourage all of you to embrace your own story through all of this of patriotism, pride in your community and its long history and in one of there. most importantly in the role we

all play in the long road ahead for our veterans. february of 2004 i deployed with the marine corps surgical co. to western iraq. at the time my was active duty in the navy and my babies were 15 months old. said goodbye to my family in florida and headed to camp pendleton where a ragtag group of us put our things together and headed to iraq. our job was to set up a mobile field hospital to care for the marines operating in the area and there were a lot of them. we had an air wing, infantry regiment and the huge combat support battalion. i was part of a four person combat stress platoon, myself, my psychiatrist partner and two and listed psychiatric technicians. together we were responsible for the mental health treatment and care of 10,000 u.s. marines. this was a long time ago, 2004.

some of you will remember this year as the year in which both battles for volusia --fallujah were fought. i can say on behalf of medical personnel we could never have imagined or dreamed of the number of casualties we would see during that time. for the end of this challenging time i decided i was going to write this list of things that were good and bad about iraq. i think for me it was the beginning of what became a lot of writing as therapy and closure. for my colleagues in iraq this was hysterical, hysterically funny because as i told them i'm going to write a list. they said that will be the most lopsided list anyone has ever written. it was lopsided, true, but took the form of a poem and i sent it by e-mail to my husband who forwarded it to 25 people.

by the time my returned to florida in september the list as recall that had literally been forwarded around the world and hundreds of e-mails were waiting for me. people who wanted to talk about it, that related to it. i have to say i was embarrassed, overwhelmed, i wasn't myself in 15 different ways and i didn't handle the attention very gracefully at first until i started hearing from viet nam era marines, korean war navy corpsman, nurses, marines even from world war ii who told me that the list made them remember and that remembering was ok and i was humbled. i thought i would share the poem as it is truly the beginning of my story and it appears many

others as well. think that we are good. sunset over the desert almost always orange. sunrise over the desert almost always read. childlike excitement of having fresh fruit at dinner after going months without it. being allowed to be the kind of clinician i know i can be and want to be. with no limits placed and no doubt expressed. but most of all the united states marines, our patients, walking everyday and having every single person who passed by me say oorah, ma'am, telling me through blinding pain or morphine induced euphoria when can i get out of here, i just want to get back to my unit. meeting a young sergeant who lost an eye in an explosion asked a surgeon if he could open the other one. when he did he sat up and looked at the marine from his theme being treated in the other room,

he smiled, laid-back down and said i only have one good eye but i can see that my marines are okay. and of course meeting the one i will never forget, the one who threw himself on a grenade to save the marines at his side, the first marine medal of honor recipient of the vietnam war. my friends, some of them are lifelong in a way that is indescribable. patients who had courage unlike anything i have never witnessed before my comrades in the surgical co. some of the things they went through will be with them forever but still they provided outstanding care to our marines day in and day out, sometimes for days at a time with no break for seven endless months and above all else holding the hand of that dying marine. things that were not good.

camel fighters, poisonous scorpions, bats flopping around in the darkness, howling territorial wild dogs, flies that insisted on landon on our faces, giant looming mosquitos and invisible flies that carried leishmaniasis. 130 degrees wearing long sleeved hands and combat boots in 132 degrees, random and predictable power outages that led to sweating throughout the night. wedding in places i didn't know i could switch like wrists and years, the war of helicopters overhead, resounding thud of exploding artillery in the distance, popping of gunfire, not knowing if any of those sounds was a good thing or a bad thing, the siren and big boys yelling to take cover, cracking sound of giant artillery rounds splitting open against direct, the rumble of the ground

shattering windows, hiding under flapjack and kevlar helmets away from a broken windows, waiting to be told we could come to the hospital. black helicopter with that big red cross on its side landing in our path. worse, watching gray marine helicopters landing at our pad because they were filled with patients and often we didn't know they were coming. assuring a sobbing marine colonel away from the trauma they and all you listen to is marines cry out in pain, meeting the 21-year-old corporal with three purple hearts and listening to him weep because he was ashamed of feeling afraid to go back. telling a roomful of stunned the marines in blood soaked uniforms that their comrade they had tried to save had died of his wounds. watching a lot of of the boots of one of our young nurses while she told me about one who died in the trauma they and the one she had to tell when he pleaded

for the truth that his friend didn't make it. listening to another of our nurses tell of that marine who came in talking telling her his name, about how she pleaded with him not to give up. she could see his eyes the doll when he couldn't fight any longer. and finally above all else holding the hand of that dying marine. so i refer to him in the beginning, the baseball player, also the dying marine in the poem, says corporal jason bonham, came to the doors of the surgical company with a serious head injury. not many of you who live through something like this know that in combat medicine there is no at operation, his move to a place he or she can be given fluids,

pain medication and support while that person dies. i met corporal dunham in our expecting room, held his hand and told him we were proud of him. we had no idea how proud we actually were. in what now looking back can only be a medical miracle his status >> reporter: and he began to squeeze my hand in response to my voice. he was medevaced, raise the helicopter crew to get him to baghdad and on to germany and he made it home to bethesda where his parents were waiting for him before he finally died of his wounds eight days after coming through our trauma day. that was april 22nd, 2004. it is almost nine years ago now but sometimes feels like yesterday and specifically when i'm texting with his mother about baseball, we later learned he had given his life to save

the men in his squad by throwing his body over a live grenade. there was an embedded reporter with his unit. you remember we have all sorts of these reporters embedded. he came through our surgical co. to learn of our experience with him. later he told our story to jason's mother. it ends up that that is all she really hoped for when she heard he was critically injured, that someone was holding his hand. so she wrote to me that summer and she thanked me for doing the only thing she wanted to do but couldn't do. we remain very close ever since and in january of 2007 president bush posthumously awarded the congressional medal of honor to her son. than they invited me to be with them at the white house when the award was given, where i was proud to be the single sailor

standing among 65 marines in dress blues. in recent years i have been privileged to attend with them the christening ceremony of the uss jason dunham, the navy's newest destroyer. i am so fortunate through all of this. i am not the only medical or religious personnel person from our services who has sat with a dying warrior on the battlefield but because of the really truly unique circumstances around all of this i know i maybe one of the only ones who has learned of his whole story because i have gotten to know his family. i consider them great friends and they are very cherished to me. she introduces people to me as her angel which is overwhelming that she believes he fought to stay alive because when i spoke to him he heard her, not me. i know we both need to believe

that. so not the typical place for a psychologist. nothing about my people and involved typical places raise psychologists so what did i do in the midst of this? when i returned i ran away as many do after trauma. i left the navy, but clinical work altogether. i was hoping to find some peace. during that time rule number 2 was written by accident, it was written as therapy. a vietnam marine, retired colonel who has written several books about the marines in vietnam contacted me and said you need to write a book where every line in that poem is captured and i was very respectful since he is a colonel. i settled respect, absolutely not. i will not write another word about this experience. and you know what? wants a month he wrote me an

e-mail and said what about that book? nine months after getting home and living through this they strange suffering that as a shrink i can the fine quite easily but as a person i didn't even realize i was going through. funny how that works. i finally wrote to him and said okay, what do i do? it is published not because of him. is published because of beth dunham who told me i should get it published. this whole thing is for fault. the most important part of all this is i learned exposure therapy works. with each story that i wrote it became progressively easier to write the words on a page and a route that time i decided it was time to go back to work with our wounded marines and i have been there ever since. it is where i belong really and i guess it is a unique opportunity to try to be one of

the voices out there trying to convince people that it is okay to seek help for wounds no one can see. someone told me he feels like the country after this is in the midst of a slow-motion mass casualty. i have to say those words struck a chord with me. after being awakened many nights by pounding marines on the door waking us up, mass casualties, the words are a little different for me but it fits. in my humble opinion that is because it is based on one thing. i am hearing it over and over again from my patients, from those in audiences who ask questions in front of everybody come up later and speak to me, it is the sense that seems to be consistent across men and women, special forces, aviation, medical. we seem to have one thing in common and it is important for all of you as veterans, family

members, as obvious members of the concerned community, it is important for you to know that some of our current and past service members feel alone. they feel there is no way anyone could ever understand how hard it is to admit that there is something wrong that no one can see. so the way ahead, to being healed and hole again although changed because we are all changed, we will all be moving through this together as a community. it is a validation. we provide validation for others in ways we don't even realize. as a health care provider to deploy long time ago and now appears from our current warriors and their families, please trust me on this.

you matter to our country's veterans, to those members of your community, the family members and friends and co-workers in ways that you will never know. if you take an extra moment to validate whenever it is that person might be feeling, it is an extra 30 seconds to remind that person it is ok if you are not okay. to know for certain as you go forward that that one incident of locking eyes, a little extra time holding on to a handshake or a hug, you can validate that feeling of being alone and start a person on a path to healing. we do not need to the mental health providers to do that for one another. sometimes in those moments of comfort that might show up in what can be pretty chaotic in people's minds, those moments

can be like changing. in closing i will tell you a couple other short stories about two of those moments for me. pitch black tent, the 14 women who call it home had different schedules so everyone agreed we would navigate by flashlight, my temporary caught was in the middle of the tent perpendicular to the rest of them. the other women had cavils and personal items such as those of husbands, children, navy seal boyfriends hanging over dare cox, the air-conditioner built into the side of the tent forced women to use thick blankets over their sleeping bad as at night. i lived out of my house pack for the ten days i worked there. nearby fallujah was burning and casualties were flowing too fast for the shock trauma platoon to keep up with them. two junior members of the team,

mary and noel had only been in iraq two months but walked with the air of experienced critical care nurses. they also worked with chronic sleep deprivation. two marines came and awakened them. my third morning there. in a few days i had been there i have seen them catching an hour whenever they could. this particular night they hadn't slept one minute. qaddafi after eating breakfast i returned to the tent. was a hundred and the sun was warm in the air really fast. inside it was still cold and dark. a sensory deprivation chamber. i fumbled through my hat with a notebook when i saw a patients. at the side of the tent it was lifted allowing a flash of blinding light and dropped again. noel and maria entered silently. maria didn't take off her booth the collapse to her caught and held her blanket over her head. noel undressed in the corner of the tent and changed into slacks that said u.s. navy on the chest and right legs.

she sat on her cot, sighed deeply and lowered her face to her hands. a few minutes later she came over. how are you, no, i ask quietly. we lost one on the table, she replied. very obvious fatigue in her voice. was she the first? yes. everyone is wasted but it probably wasn't about losing him as much as it was about the whole last couple of days. there are a couple patients i can't get out of my head, you know. i waited. a group of three came in, she said, with their corman. the captain was dead. he had been shot under one arm and out of the other. that corpsman could have used you. he had been applying pressure under the his captain's arms for a long time. didn't realize that guy bled out along time before we got him. he just sat there, the corpsman, staring into space. you wouldn't answer our questions or talk to anybody. that might be a good person for

me to see, i said. is he still here? no, they took him back with them this morning. probably best, kicking the wooden floor of the tent looking at her flip-flop clad feet. another came in with him, a gunny, triple and beauty who lost one leg below the knee, one at the head and another below the elbow. he was amazing. she took a deep breath and exhales through pursed lips. things for getting tent for a while. the look on my face must have been stressed. i was running past him once trying to get some supplies and he said to me i felt horrible. i thought oh no, he needs more morphine and i have been so busy i missed it. i went over to him and said have you been okay? do you need anything? i need to ask you something. i leaned over him. how many irishman does it take to change a light bulb?

she said i couldn't believe it. what did you just say? he said it is too serious in here. you people need to lighten up. he told jokes the entire time we worked in there, she said. it was like a stand-up routine. the lowlands and they came to get him and he waved at us with his one arm and gave us a thumbs up. we have been laughing so hard for the last half-hour we stood there like idiots and watched them loading him in. they set the hatch and the bird lifted off and it was like opening the floodgates. everyone started crying. a few people even fell to there needs. she rubbed her eyes. wonder how he is now. ..

>> she smiled. well, apparently, it takes 21. one to hold the lightbulb, and the other 20 to drink until the room starts spinning. [laughter] so it turns out there's many stories i could have shares with you, and after speaking with my host last night, i understand this was even more appropriate for this audience than i thought. [laughter] because i guess there's a lot of irish-american folks here in savannah. so there you go, there's your joke for you for the day. it's interesting, because as i look back on sort of thinking about the stories to share with audiences, this one keeps coming forward. not because it's especially

wonderful, which it is, and not because it may sound familiar to some of you. we all have these sort of life-changing moments. this man wasn't a gunny. i had to change everybody's ranks and injuries. he wasn't a triple amputee. i had to make people unidentifiable, right? for the book. um, and interestingly i have no idea, i had no idea what happened to him or anyone that we took care of. we had zero tracking system in place back in 2004. it's much better now. but these people came into our surgical company, and in many cases really touched us, and then we had no clue what happened. so the reason, though, to tell you that story is because in this particular case there's this part two. and i think it's a perfect description of exactly what i've a just been sort of talking with you about. if we keep our eyes open, if we allow ourselves to grow and change in a positive way after a

traumatic experience, we see that life comes full circle. just like my little baseball player who's not so little anymore, and jason dunham's family. i got to see this gunny again. the book is associated with a terrific charity. it's called the semper fi fund, and it helps injured marines and corpsmen who have been with the marines. and a few years ago i was invited to a, um, party with the board of directors, and several of the fund's recipients. now, the director of the fund had given my book to all of the board of directors as well as these marines who have been given various types of assistance from the fund. and i walked into this restaurant, and i looked across the bar, and there he was. this gunny who wasn't a gunny. he was drinking a beer with one prosthetic hand, and his service dog's leash was wrapped around the other, and he was surrounded

by women, and they were laughing. [laughter] so i knew it was him, of course, and i said to my husband who's a a marine, there's just no way i can go talk to that guy. and he said if you don't, you will regret it for the rest of your life. so i was so nervous, but i went over there, and i introduced myself, and i said i'm the author of that book that karen gave you. and he said, oh, that was of a good book. and i waited, kind of cringing. so finally i had to ask him, i said, well, what'd you think of your chapter? and he said, my chapter? and i said, i called it the irishman and the lightbulb? he said, but that guy was a gunny, i'm just a staff or sergeant. [laughter] so i explained how i had to change identities, how i promoted him, you know, i assured him that was definitely you. he took a long swig of beer, and he said, well, i'm going to need to reread it now.

[laughter] i said, probably are. before i left him, though, i just said i need you to know something. those medical people at tq that night, they were exhausted. they were up to their knees in casualties, and they'd been working for three days straight. and you saved them. he looked at me for a second, and he said, see, that's just so funny. i always figured their saved me. so, ladies and gentlemen, it does not matter about which war we are talking. now i understand why people got in touch after reading the poem, even people from world war ii. i get it now. because across generations the whole point is still the same. when i was out in iraq, many of my marine patients kept telling me, docker you've got to watch -- doc, you've got to

watch band of brothers. why in the world would i want to watch band of brothers while i'm out here in iraq? thank you, no. i did not watch it. i did get home, and someone gave it to me as a welcome home present, which is sort of strange. [laughter] anyway, there it sat on my bookcase wrapped in plastic for four years. and when you hear people speak of avoidance after trauma, that's a good example of avoidance after trauma. i finally did, though, get around to watching it. and now i understand why they wanted me to see it. there's a title of one of the episodes, it says why we fight. and that's what they were trying to tell me. they were just trying to tell me why they were fighting. and it's the same today as it always has been. it's for one another. it's for the people to our left and our right, and it always has been. so for all of you who have worn our country's uniform or

supported a family member who did, thank you for your service. it will always mean a great deal to us. and for all of you now who are part of a really amazing community of patriotic energy and support, you can be a cohesive, supportive, protective role in the lives of your sons, daughters, neighbors, friends as they come home from the fight and give them what they need then going forward with the rest of the fight. for some of them, that stigma will be the greatest fight they've ever faced. you have the ability to give them permission to not be okay. to validate their sacrifice in a personal and heartfelt way that they will never forget. so if i may speak on behalf of all of them, thank you for your support of your veterans that we

are all so proud of. you matter to them. you matter to us. thank you very much. [applause] thank you. thank you. thank you very much. [applause] >> of course, very happy to, very happy to take questions. >> [inaudible] >> i think, yeah, i think we need the microphone. i'd love to hear your question, sir. >> i hope i'm not the only person here who doesn't know this, but what is rule one, and what is rule twosome is. >> oh, my goodness. what a great question. i planted him. [laughter] so do i have any m.a.s.h. fans

in here? oh, yeah. i grew up watching m.a.s.h.. best show ever. no show will ever come close. rule number two and rule number one came from the first season of m.a.s.h. in a wonderful episode in which hawkeye loses a person on the table who he knew from high school, and henry, his commanding officer, says to him the only thing i know is that there's two rules of war. rule number one is that young men die, and rule number two is that doctors can't change rule number one. any other questions? >> do you have any insights into the alarming and tragic phenomena of the number of suicides in veterans which we all are becoming familiar with? just anything at all you could tell that could be changed or whatever? thank you. >> yeah. you know, i think this is one of

these things that the good news is that all the services take it so incredibly seriously. i've had the opportunity to speak at a few flag-level conferences for the navy and the marines, and truly at the four-star level this is, like, number one and number two priorities of these guys, even above what you would think would be, you know, missions and that sort of thing. it's truly alarming, as you say. the bottom line as far as we can tell is that this still comes down to the stigma that i was referring to. that there is still even with all of the advances that we've made in working to make it okay to get treatment and help, there's still a true stigma amongst many of our war fighters around admitting that they need help for these, these wounds. they're truly injuries, and that's the way we're trying to push it forward is this is not a mental illness, this isn't something that makes you sick. it's an injury. it's something that happened to

a healthy person, and treatment works. so there's really a push to try to change the way people think about this. but this needs to happen in the mid levels of all of our services, that mid-level leadership also puts that type of message out. and i think this is going to be decades before that actually is the case. i think the, unfortunately, the suicide rate is a direct reflection of that, of people just not feeling that they have anywhere to turn, that they can't ask for help. so, again, one by one we can change that. yes, sir. right behind you. >> yeah. my father served in the second world war, and i was worn in 1946 -- i was born in 1946, and he would never answer any questions about his service. and all we knew was he brought home a trunk full of nazi flags and some nazi swords and that he'd been in the artillery. recently i have done some research on what he actually,

where he was and what he was doing, and it sounds horrific just on the paper record. and my brothers and i have recently found some photos he brought back that shows that he was at one of the death camps early on and so forth. >> wow. >> what i'm wondering is whether anybody has done any study of this phenomenon you're talking about and how it was unaddressed with world war ii veterans. and what i'm really trying to figure out is how do you, how do i get into the mind of this father who was totally silent about it through his life? >> right. there is a lot of interest in the world war ii, um, generation of veterans because, as you say, they were very -- as a whole, they were very silent about their service. and yet there seems to be this thought that many of them were actually quite functional, went on to live very functional lives and, you know, seemed to do okay. you know, sort of on the surface

at least. and there's a couple different theories. obviously, one is that there was just that still that stigma, there was no, no possibility of receiving help. that just didn't exist, you didn't do it. it was what did they call it back then -- >> [inaudible] >> battle fatigue, but even before that it was like a soldier's heart or something? it was something that made it sound like you were weak, like if you had a soldier's heart -- yeah. so it was even, it's, the names have evolved. but they started off extremely, um, sort of prejudicial, you know? that it was -- so i think there was certainly that. but then there's also this thought that maybe because many world war ii people came home on ships together. they had sometimes months to actually be with people who got it and decome press some of what they lived through. and perhaps that may have been a

true protective factor formany of them despite the horror which is, as you say, unfathomable. despite that, if he came home with another group of people who got it, who understood him, who didn't judge him, who knew what he lived through, wholied -- who lived through something similar, they were able to debrief and sort of move through a lot of the process together. that's one theory. it's sort of why this whole generation of people who lived through something so bad seemed to generally do okay. the other theory, of course, is that they just refused to talk about it and refused to let it bother them and refused to do it. it just wasn't an option. i like the first theory better, because i think it actually makes some sense. now our veterans are home, you know, 12 hours after they were in iraq, they're home, and it's just really shocking.

>> could the difference also have been that the way they were welcomed home? >> could have been. the country was obviously -- >> there were parades, they were revered. >> right. >> you came home from vietnam, you were shunned. >> that's right. and certainly the country's involvement during world war ii has to also have been protective. the entire country was part of the fight. and so that, clearly, has to have been protective. vietnam, no doubt about it, the country's disinvolvement and even hostility towards those that fought is clearly an additional risk factor for our vietnam veterans. no doubt about that. no doubt about that. >> [inaudible] the difference between a draft and a volunteer early? >> sure.

>> [inaudible] >> sure. >> [inaudible] >> right. right. there's some different thoughts on that. but, yeah, theoretically when you're volunteering to do it, this is something you're choosing to do, and there should be a different way of thinking about it. yeah. i don't think anyone's ever come to a true consensus on the draft situation. but, yeah, you're right. that's certainly a different factor as we've looked at different wars. >> hi. this question may be frivolous, but i'm curious. i'm the grandmother of twin 1-year-old boys, and i want to know who watched your children. [laughter] >> well, that's a great question. their grandmother was part of that. my parents, actually, left their home in sacramento and came and lived with my husband in florida to help him and, obviously, that was a great comfort to me to know that they would always be with someone who adored them. unfortunately, it was tough on their relationship with my husband. [laughter]

it still hasn't -- that's one of the casualties of our war. [laughter] yeah. not so so good. [laughter] but i think having them there was clearly helpful. and my husband was out of the marines by then. and so he, he was there. he was working, but he was there which is, was a good thing, clearly, for me knowing that their father was there but was not good for him because as a marine hairier pilot, he was the one who was supposed to be heading over there, not me. he was better suited to go, not me. we agreed on that. there was a lot of what we call in the biz cognitive dissonance. none of that made sense. and it was really a sense of -- it was almost like he resented me for going. he had flown for 12 years and never got the chance to actually, you know, blow open a path for infantry marines to go

through which was what he was supposed to do in that airplane. so it was a challenge for us. but the good news is the kids had all sorts of support. [laughter] and they were really what mattered the most to me. >> this is back to the question of what do we do with an individual coming back who has these internal wounds, and it would -- it seems to me that when you are learning how to fight for your country, you're basically told to suck it up. and you live with that psychology and that protects you and that gives you the courage, if you will, to go on and do horrendous things. then suddenly to dismiss all of that and lead them, that is

where probably the problem lies. how do you make that transition. what you mentioned about being op the ship for -- on the ship for a time and you watch ncis or something, and they address this kind of a problem where people come home, and they don't know how to relate to the people that they left behind. >> right. >> so is this one of those serious issues about individually trying to take away what you had to know to go in to fight to do these things and replace it with therapy? >> to some extent. although the attempt to change the way we think about these wounds as injuries instead of illness is an attempt to try to make the this akin to a badly-sprained ankle. and so whenever i get my chance to talk to a big group of marines or sailor, i say, okay, everybody knows what it looks like when you sprain your ankle,

what it feels like, right? it's swollen, it's bruise 3, it -- bruised, it hurts to walk. and everyone knows what you should do to take care of that ankle, right? everybody knows you should get off of it, put some compression, take some ice, maybe take vitamin m -- motrin. [laughter] and so we all know this. and then i say to them, okay, just go with me for a second. what if you don't have time? what if you're embarrassed? you leaf the boot -- you leave the boot laced up real tightly and you do crazy things you shouldn't do in boots, but that's a whole different lecture. so you stay on it. you walk on it for weeks, months, long time. is it possible no one will know how badly sprained your ankle is? well, sure. yeah, you could fake it pretty good. and then someday i tell them even you have to take a shower. so you take the boot off, now what does your ankle look like? oh, boy.

that does not hook good. and you don't have to be a corpsman to know there's something wrong with that ankle, right? by the time that happens. it looks like a bowling pall on the end of your leg. so you get sent to the doc, and then the doc gets sent to the physical therapist. is and then i tell them what if the therapist gives you some exercise and things to do, and you are a patient patient, and you do exactly what that person tells you. is it possible that you end up with a stronger, more flexible, more resilient ankle at the end? and they all have to admit, yeah, it's probably possible. meanwhile, i'm watching like lightbulbs kind of coming up on top of all these heads in the audience. and, of course, the punchline is this is no different. normal person, injury, signs that we recognize, an attempt to cover them up. a moment when you can't cover it up anymore and treatment. same thing. so this is what we're trying to

push forward, this idea so that, hopefully, it doesn't have to be something that's counter to what you learned. what you learn is you've got to be healthy in order to help your unit. same thing goes with this. so that's what we're hoping. it's being taught at the very junior level, and we're trying to, you know, move that quickly through the ranks. we'll see how it goes. so far at least i think on the junior side it's accepted that way. on the very senior side, it's definitely accepted that way. because they know, those guys know, the leadership, we've got to keep these guys healthy. so i think, i hope that will be the case. feel free to use the ankle analogy if you ever need to. [laughter] one more question, i'm told. anyone? no pressure. it doesn't have to be a great question. [laughter] we've got one here and, okay. can we have two more? we have one right there. all right, sir, you're next. >> hi. i had a son that recently came

back from afghanistan that's a double amputee. i'm very proud of him and admire his courage, but now he wants to go back and, honestly, i think he's crazy. can you explain -- i know this happens a lot where they just want to go back, and they've given so much already. can you explain this mindset to me? >> uh-huh. actually, there's this workshop we give for folks where they're returning, there's the title of a seminar, why i want to go back. it's very common. i even felt it, too, as much as, you know, really? but you do. because there's a sense of knowing what you're doing, there's a sense of real competence in combat. everything's very black and white. your role is very clear, what's expected of you is very clear. there's no additional stuff going on. it's just you and your unit and what you have to do. and there's that, that's really nice. it's very simple. and i think that when you get back and there's all sort of all the different pieces that are floating around with family and the future and your injuries and

everything, it srt of starts to feel really complicated. and so they yearn for the simplicity where everything was simple. in addition, some people become true adrenaline junkies. i have to fight with a lot of my patients about their 100 mile-an-hour motorcycle riding. come on, man, you're killing me here, you know? but they feel, they tell me they don't feel alive, that they felt alive in combat. that was alive. this, you know? so we have to work on sort of increasing pleasurable activities in their lives and realizing it's never going to look like that again. it's never going to feel like that again. but that's good. because here in savannah, georgia, you shouldn't feel like that. right? that shouldn't -- that's just a, that's just a very spsk feeling, and we don't really want that again. so i think it's very normal. and there are actually a fair amount of amputees that are returning to active duty and even deployment. it would be a different role, potentially, than what he was in, but it's possible.

you know, hopefully he'll move through his transition as well and kind of see where he can contribute to the army? yeah. where he can contribute to the army or to his community in a different way and still find pleasure and joy from that. our last question is here. this gentleman here. in the hat. in the blue hat. everyone's pointing at him. [laughter] >> hi. i'm a psychiatrist, and i've treated many veterans from vietnam to the present. one of the problems i have with what you've said, though, is that there's a marked difference between the normalcy that most people experience and the horrors of war. people in the military in wars see things, do things and experience things that normal people have no idea what they are.

>> that is true. >> and it's very difficult for those two groups to understand each other because people who haven't experienced it have no idea what it's like, and people who are experienced it don't understand why the people who haven't experienced it don't understand it. >> right. >> so they live in very, two different worlds. >> exactly right. >> in which the military world is almost like a netherworld where they're experiencing things that are, you've said, that are horrendous, you know, that are exhausting, that go beyond anything. >> yep. >> and normal people don't know how to relate to that. and so there's tremendous difficulty in getting back into the normal world because their world will never again be normal. >> no. well, you're absolutely right about that. there's no doubt. and when you say the problem with what i said, you mean as

far as supporting, trying to support people one person at a time, or -- is that what was, you were addressing? >> um, yeah. my specialty for many years was treating traumatic brain injuries. so i understand your analogy about the injuries versus illness very well. but the problem with your swollen ankle is that nonmilitary people, they've had swollen ankles also -- >> right, right. >> but they've never seen their neighbor jump on a grenade and be exploded all over the room. >> sure. >> we think, oh, it was exploded, but they don't understand tissue and blood and, you know, body parts -- >> with right. >> -- flying. so they can relate to the idea of a swollen ankle, but they can't relate to the military experience. >> okay, i do -- >> so in that way it's very different. >> i understand. and perhaps your point is that as a, as connective story the swollen ankle is a difficult one to use.

potentially true. i use it with military guys to try to break the stigma, but, yeah, i see your point. i think what this comes down to is just connection of human beings, and we will -- people who haven't lived through it will never understand it, and i think admitting that to someone is huge. i hear that from my guys a lot that when they see a doctor or a nurse or even just have someone who's concerned that's trying to help, it's very important to make some comments such that i have no idea what you've lived there, and i would never you said it, but i'm right here if you want to take me along. whatever it was, it's okay. i'm still here. you know, that kind of a general acceptance can be really helpful. but, yeah, you're -- i know what you're trying to say, doc. yes, sir. >> [inaudible] there are those of us who have been to combat, come back and -- [inaudible] >> right. he didn't say people weren't normal, he said their experience is so out of the realm of normal

compared to living here in savannah day to day. >> i heard him say -- >> oh, i don't think he meant that. no, no, no, i didn't hear that at all. i think what he meant was the experience, what sort of our -- the typical american live anything savannah is living. we would call maybe that's a normal day is going to work, going to the grocery store, going to school, that might be what we define as normal, and then what you live there i in combat is just so very different. so, perhaps, just a different way of defining what we've lived through. what you've lived through. it's very different than what your neighbors have lived through if they've never gone to war. i think we're probably done, aren't we? because we, actually, went over. [laughter] okay. thank you all very much. [applause] sorry. >> thank you so much. no, you didn't go over. that was wonderful. thank you so much for coming.

if you'd like to see dr. kraft in person and have her sign a book, in the tent in the square, telfair square, and before you get away, rock legend gregalman is also -- allman is also signing his memoir, "my cross to bear," until 2:00. thank you for coming. [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, and this is live coverage from the sixth annual savannah book festival in georgia. our live coverage will continue in about an

>> the other thing that made this a bit of a scandal was this. the republicans were pushing this issue, and they would have kind of a jingle, a little song, a line that we do and they would