modern middle east. finally daniel james brown recounts the story of the 1936 american olympic rowing team in the boys in the boat. you confined more on these customers by going to in thebelt.org and clicking on in the best sellers. in this hourlong presentation be author of coca-cola explores the soft drink's origins history of the great american soft drink and the company that makes it". >> i never had the opportunity to do this before. this is the committee can. i am quite proud of the knee can. it is actually larger than the old 6 counts bottles i grew up with. and i like them because they

hold the fizz and they stay relatively cold water. let me introduce my other books really quickly. this is my latest book, not the new edition of polk, silly cedi, wonderful children's book. you and find all of these on my website which my website is my name, mark pendergrast.com. this is jack and the bean soup, an elaborate joke book. this is uncommon ground, history of coffee, inside the outbreak about disease detectives at the cdc and there are several cia officers in the audience, this is a mirror mirror, a history of mirrors, unbelievably broad ranging but kind of interesting. japan's tipping point which is recent. i went looking to see if they were doing a lot about renewable energy after the fukushima

meltdown. and one more thing, victims of memory is probably my most important book. it is about the repressed memory epidemic of the late 80s and nearly 90s when it is amazing people come up with things that never happened and remember them very clearly. i wanted to open this with a quote from 1985. if you are interested in coca-cola, you know what happened in 1985 from. they changed the flavor of coca-cola and the entire world went insane. it is really amazing. i can't think of another product people had gone so berserk over and i started with a story about the flavor change because it is

so emblematic. it was a history lesson that the public, the coca-cola company of what the drink meant to them and wasn't so much, but what it meant. the company was kind enough to let me have a file with some of the letters people wrote to the 1985. i am very heavy coke drinker. i do not drink coffee or anything but coke. always had a glass or can of coke, always. now to try to find a drink that you will tolerate. it will not be new coke, never. another letter. changing polk is like breaking the american dream like not selling hot dogs at a ball game. millions of dollars of

advertising cannot overcome years of conditioning for generations, the old coke is in my blood. until you bring the old coke back i will drink r c. i do not drink alcoholic beverages. i don't smoke or chase other women. my only place has been polk, you have taken the pleasure from me. my dearest coke, you have betrayed me. we went out last week as we have often, i knew our love affair was over and it goes on and on. it is amazing. i wanted to start out with that introduction. the question is how in the world did that happen? how did a drink which is 99% sugar water come to represent the united states of america to many people and come to mean so much and have so much power in

the world including politics, the environment, now they are being blamed for the obesity epidemic? how did this happen? i.t. will give you a quick march through this and probably won't cover everything everybody wants to hear some make little notes about questions you want answered and i will try to answer them. coca-cola was invented in the 1886 by this gentleman, this is the only known picture of him named john pemberton born in 1831 in their rural town in georgia. he became a pharmacist. he was a doctor and he was a patent medicine maker. he was convinced he was going to make his fortune. in made extract of stalin gm and blow flower cough syrup and other patent medicines which you would have never heard of. he was not a very good businessman. he would make money and given away. he was also in the civil war and

he was wounded and i believe that is one of the reasons he became a morphine addict which many civil war veterans did become. he also had ready access as of pharmacist although it was perfectly legal until 1914 any way. he became very interested, he moved to atlanta, the big city of atlanta in 1869 the tournament to make his fortune and he was sure he had it in 1884 two years before he invented coca-cola because he made a drink that was an imitation of this world famous van mary any but if you had been alive in 1885 you would have known all about it. everybody knew about it. angelo maryannie moved to corsica and began to make this wine with an infusion of coca leaf. it had a good healthy portion

not only of alcohol but cocaine. everybody thought cocaine was a wonder drug in the 1880s including sigmund freud and he had endorsements from queen victoria, thomas edison, sarah bernhardt and pope leo xiii. so naturally with such a popular drink, many people indicated it. including john pemberton. recreated drink called french wine coca, very clearly a rip-off and in interviews with the atlanta constitution he said as much but he said mine is better. i have made a superior product and i want to read you from one of the ads because french wine coca, give you a good flavor of

his style of advertising. americans, i will try a southern accent. i have been living of the north along with won't be very good. he was a southern gentleman. americans are the most nervous people in the world. all who are suffering for many nervous complaints we commend to use the wonderful and delightful remedy french wine coca. infallible the curing all who are afflicted with any nerve trouble, physical exhaustion or chronic wasting disease, gastric irritability, constipation, headache, quickly cured by coca wine. it is the greatest blessing to the human family, god's best gift in medicine, clergymen, lawyers, literary men, merchants, bankers, ladies and all his sedentary employment causes nervous frustration, irregularities and stomach, bowls and kidneys require a delightful stimulant will fine

wine coca in valuable. asia restored to health and happiness, coca is the most wonderful in the greater of the sexual organs and will cure seminole weakness, impotence and so on when all other remedies fell. you went on and on about this drink and he was selling it like gangbusters one guess what happened? sam jones came to town, he was the hellfire preacher who convinced everybody that liquor was evil. so atlanta was one of the first city's that voted to go dry. there was a vote in november of 1885 and to give people time to adjust to this he was going to take effect on july 1st, 1886, so john pemberton frantically tried to to figure out how to modify french one coca to make it his temperance drink. that is what coca is, ladies and gentlemen.

he kept the coca leaf. added a lot of rover -- it was very bitter with cola which he had also, kola nut was a very popular new drug that contained caffeine, this is the formula for coca-cola, the new one, the reason you should buy this book and have me autograph that. handwriting of frank robinson who was pemberton's early part. frank robinson took the drink, convinced him it would make his fortune and cure is headaches. this is his handwriting, does that look familiar? he rode out the famous script, he named coca-cola which guess why it is named coca-cola?

has polk the wheat and kola nut, the printable drug ingredients so it had cocaine and caffeine. nobody ever found the recipe for french wine coca and there it is. i wanted to show you what these were, these are real plants, this is what it looks like, they make fluid extract of cocoa with the. and importing it from peru in new jersey but be cocaine, they did that since 1903, coca-cola has not had any cocaine in the 20s. i took this picture in 2006 researching inside the outbreaks, and bought one promote beautiful woman. and spit it out immediately, incredibly bitter and that is why he added so much sugar to a. they advertise it to children.

this is in 1894, and in 1896 calendar, they put it on things you had to look at a lot. they would give away free matchbooks with coca-cola logo on it or mirrors, japanese fans or calendars, and early on they had very wholesome, nice looking young women although this one looks a little bit stoned. it was a delightful summer and winter beverage. >> tried to sell expensive effort headache relief. at the same time a medicine and a soft drink and it was served in soda fountains with carbonated water, and around this time frank robinson wrote in a letter, i believe, said

women keep contacting me and saying would you please stop with vote medicinal advertising? just advertise it as a delicious and refreshing drink because we don't want to feel like we are sick to drink it. he began to get that idea and gradually over the next few years they began to change the advertising. this is one from 1905, two years before they took out the cocaine and they are still advertising it with little children. as men, women, and children, healthy and happy and drinking coca-cola. let me just mention why they took out the cocaine. cocaine had been a wonder drug in the 1880s but gradually it became clear it was an addictive drug that was a real problem. the reason they took it out was coca-cola was a very southern drink and there were rumors that

black people were drinking too much coca-cola, getting high on the cocaine, raping a white woman, murdering their bosses, this was a newspaper that i found at the time. i am quite convinced one of the reasons, one of the main reasons was from racism, that they removed the cocaine from coca-cola. this is another one showing a prescription for students, brain workers, supposed to make you smarter. as the drink was quite controversial even after they took the cocaine out, the company decided to try to make a patriotic beverage. here you see uncle sam pulling polk out of the white house soda fountain. it didn't do them any good. this man whose name is harvey wiley, hated coca-cola and he

was kind of the ralph nader of his day. very powerful, very popular. he was the one who got the pure food and drug act passed in 1906 and was the first head of the fda or what came to be known as the fda. he got the u.s. government to sue coca-cola in 1911 which almost put them out of business and one of his big complaints was caffeine was an added deleterious ingredient that they were trying to promote to children and polk barely survived this lawsuit. i hope you will read the whole chapter about it. i hope you won't go into detail here but one of the things that came out is they agreed never to show children under the age of 12 drinking coca-cola in an ad again and as far as i know they never have. here is harvey wiley in 1912 good housekeeping article warning the public against the

gremlins of nervousness, habit and in digestion in coca-cola. that is what a coke class looked like. isaac handler always wanted to have a very wholesome women and no overt sexual appeals, kind of sexual appeals. this was his bottler in chicago who showed this prostitute who is very happy and tired and says satisfied underneath and you conceive the empty coke bottle. he didn't like that but took the idea and made that ad from it instead. polk early coke early on realiz should have sports celebrities. they convinced him to buy stock, and it was a basin of cobb's's

fortune as it should have been in the basis of my fortune and my father's fortune who is sitting in the front row because my father's father was the pharmacist and he bought coca-cola stock in 1919 but sold it a few years later for what he thought was a good profit to build a house. unfortunate. this is an ad from the 1922, showing the relatively new at that time model, the contour bottle. what happened is coke had a contest in 1915 to select a bottle that people would recognize a blind man would recognize in the dark, that anybody would know was coca-cola. the reason they did this was not for advertising but legal purposes. they wanted to sue people imitating them and wanted not to be able to be imitated.

so that is how this classic model was created. the bottling began in 89 denying in of big way when these two chattanooga lawyers went and said we want to bottle it and i don't want it bottles, it is not a good product, the top keeps blowing off, bottles blow up. i will give you guys the rights to bottle it across the united states, and you have to use my syrup. that created this incredible franchise bottling system and also created tension between the bottlers and the company forever more. numerous lawsuits came out of that and you need to read the book to find out what they were. during the depression era robert woodruff worked with an ad man named archie lee and between them they came up with some of the best and most classic coca-cola advertising ever.

robert woodruff said no more defensive and the. we won't say it is not bad for you. and we are not going to worry about the fact that the government sued us and the army banned it from army bases in 1907. we just say it is a wholesome product and the wonderful affordable luxury and during the depression, this was a great thing. for only $0.05 give yourself a little pause that refresheses, that was the at line, so it became synonymous with coca-cola and here are these wholesome duties that if you like coca-cola they will like you too obviously, that would be good. here is a serving tray again, stuff you look at use all the time, they were good at doing this. this is a norman rockwell picture, wholesome trickle faced boy drinking coke. he looks awful close to being

under 12 but i don't think he is. this is during the time the united states was urbanizing quickly and even then coke was harkening back to what mythical pasts. very good at doing that. they couldn't show children drinking it but they sure did want to get children to drink their drink from an early age and to become loyal to it and literally addicted to it. so who better to represent their drinks and santa claus? this ad, a wonderful august i refer him to norman rockwell painted the santa clauses and they're still going on as you know. it really defiant the way we think of santa claus. until that some were fat and jolly and dressed in red but some were gaunt and tall and

wore green. forevermore santa would look like this and would prefer coca-cola and when i was growing up we had a cute little coca-cola santa claus by the fireplace. remember that? with a little tiny coca-cola? and mom and dad, would you stand up just for a moment? [applause] >> my dad made part of his living by making display racks for coca-cola and was introducing me to many people when i was first writing the first edition of the book. during world war ii was really, this is just beyond comprehension. they exempted, when pearl harbor happened, robert woodruff said we will provide coca-cola for our fighting men no matter where they are in the world for only a nickel no matter how much it

costs us. it was a great patriotic gesture and also a brilliant marketing moves. as a result coca-cola was deemed an essentials moral booster for the troops. they send coca-cola men oversees dressed in army uniforms with t o on eric's shoulders which stood for technical observer, a civilian who was essential to the war effort. most did things like fixing airplanes. these guys set up coca-cola before coca-cola bottling plants behind the lines to give to the troops and it really was a morale booster. i have all these letters i won't read to you now but they are in the book of what it meant to people to get coca-cola in the middle of warfare in the trenches. what this did was to set them up after the war with, everybody knew coke was the g i's drink.

pepsi was screaming bloody murder they did not get the same treatment. this was a funny ad by a cartoonist, your the 100th soldier who has posed with that bottle of coca-cola, you can drink it. at the same time that coca-cola was the patriotic drink which it is amazing it had become this big patriotic drink after the u.s. government had sued them not that long ago, 30 years before, it was very popular inside nazi germany. this is a 1937 cover of coca-cola news and in 1938 i found macs, eighth who was the head of coca-cola in germany and have a little mustache like heather was chanting to the fuhrer when there was the coca-cola logo next to a huge

swastika. it was really shocking. he was not a nazi himself but he had to go along to get along. i call that chapter coca-cola hubris because for him it was coca-cola over everything and he almost was sent to a concentration camp himself because he refused to nationalize it but he came up during the war with a drink called santa. it wasn't a fruit drink. was leftovers of leftovers but that is what the company used later on when they decided to go into fruit drinks, they decided to use that name. after 0 more coca-cola was launched for international expansion. this is a cover from time magazine from 1950. love that american way of life. coke became a symbol of the

american way of life for good or bad. communists spread rumors that it turn your hair white overnight, made you impotent, that it was awful for you. nonetheless, coke persevered. was almost banned in france, winemakers did not want it. i have a whole chapter in the book called coke colonization and the communists which i found interesting. coke was gutted doing advertising on radio and when television came along they jumped on board and sponsored ozzie and harriet, the perfect american family to drink coca-cola with little ricky doing so also. at the same time robert woodruff did not like change. he didn't want to change from the one drink one size one price. was a 6 ounce bottle for a nickel and that is all there

was. pepsi had come along during the depression and the pepsi in 12 rounds old beer bottles and they had a little jingle that said pepsi-cola hits the spot, 12 full ounces, that's a lot, twice as much for nickel too, pepsi-cola is the drink for you. pepsi got an image of being a low-quality drink for cheap people. but it sold a lot of pepsi and coke refused to match them and was sort of above the mall. nobody at coca-cola would say the word pepsi, the imitator or the competitor, with an deegan name them. finally they broke down and came out with king size coke and finally came out with sprite and santana and tabs, there first. diet drink, i don't want to offend people, many people loved

have the. everybody likes something and they become used to even if it does taste like kerosene. coca-cola never addressed a huge market. african-american market was very big for coca-cola, but they only showed black people as domestic servants throughout the 20s and 30s and in the 1950s they showed sugar ray robinson but this ad was in albany, another publication, so they had separate but unequal adds. wasn't until the 1960s when they were forced by the civil rights movement to not only show blacks in their ads. this was the real thing add but also an incredible story in the

book of charlie bottoms and charlie bloom, the first black sales rep that coke had and what they went through together as a team in the 1960s with death threats and people dumping food in their laps when they tried to eat together in restaurants. to coca-cola's credit robert woodruff was the one who said to atlanta businessmen when martin luther king won the nobel peace prize in 1964, you will go to the dinner in honor of martin luther king and when he was killed in 1968 coca-cola helped to pay for the funeral and make sure atlanta didn't blow up the way the rest of the country was. it has been an interesting thing, there was a racial discrimination lawsuit not long ago at all that coca-cola finally settles, but there had been racial issues right along.

the real thing campaign i think was brilliant. they wanted to appeal to hippies and they wanted to appeal to the old generation at the same time and the hippies were looking for authentic fingers. they wanted to do their thing and to be real in terms of authentic. this that managed to appeal to them as well as this is the authentic ring meaning this is not pepsi, etc.. in 1971 as part of the real thing campaign they did this iconic commercial we know so well in which they lips sync to the group the new seekers who sang the song. a very moving ahead and it shows

everybody holding coca-cola as if it were a man of peace, the world's when only be it peace if everybody would drink coca-cola. seems absurd but i kind of think that is true in a way. at the end of the book i talk about the power of capitalism to, you know, coca-cola doesn't want to see people at war. you can still very much coca-cola if people killing each other. ..

>> there's also absolutely wonderful, somebody said that he looked like a fellow when he turned around and said, hey, kid, and threw his sweaty jersey to him after the kid said, mr. green, mr. green, i think you're the best ever. but i found out if my research that today made him do 18 takes and that he threw up after the sixth. [laughter] and then they used the first take. [laughter] the poor guy. so here is 1985 which i've already talked about. roberto was a brilliant ceo who came to coke from cuba because of castro, and he had worked for coca-cola in cuba before castro nationalized the business. and he came in the, and is he said there are no sacred formulas, there are no sacred cows, and nobody ever considered that he really meant it.

but coke had been losing market share to pepsi for 20 years, and they'd had great ads, and what was the matter? and they had this annoying pepsi challenge, and they decided, well, we're going to change it and make it taste better than pepsi, and they did. about 51% of people preferred the taste of new coke to pepsi. the other 49% was almost burned down the country. [laughter] so for three months there were these huge protests, and they finally brought back coke classic. and then it reminded people of what coke meant to them, and the same drink that had been losing market share has been gaining market share, basically, ever since. so much so that many people believe this was a hoax that coke intended to do this. let me tell you, they did not intend to do it. i'm going to jump to, because i need to finish things. this is an ad there the killer coke campaign that was launched

in 2003, a guy named ray rogers who is a longtime union activist started this. now, the fact is that there were union members in coca-cola bottling plants in colombia who were murdered in the 1990s. and the question is, did the coca-cola bottler, was the coca-cola bottler in collusion with the paramilitary groups who committed these murders. i think it's entirely possible that they were. it's difficult to prove this one way or the other. i very much doubt that anyone in atlanta had anything to do with it. on the other hand, the cane has always, you know, said -- the company has always said, well, you know, those are the bottlers, that's not us. but the fact is, the bottlers can't do business unless you sell them the concentrate or the syrup or whatever you want to call it. so this was a huge campaign

which is still going on. they tried to do a lawsuit which got thrown out of court eventually. but this is the kind of thing that coca-cola absolutely hates for very good reason. but it also has made them begin to pay attention to a lot of human rights allegations around the world which i think is a good thing that they've begun to pay more attention to them. but let me say i think that coca-cola is, essentially, a pretty good company in, many ways. every major corporation does awful things. coca-cola is held accountable in a way that many companies aren't because it is this image drink, you know? it's the perfect drink for people to protest because you can protest them. so my book is not an anti-coca-cola book, it's not a pro-coca-cola book. it is a very well researched book that offers you the facts

as i came to know them on both sides of the issue. for instance, they were accused in india, quite recently, of depleting the water table. now, india has terrible water problems. but 98% of those problems come from the very poor way that they irrigate and that they do agriculture. coca-cola, some of their bottling plants they shouldn't have put them where they put them in areas with bad drought, and they did contribute to also depleting the water table, but it's a little hard to blame them entirely for this. and they have now begun to replenish the water with rain water harvesting under neville usdale who came in in 2004 as the ceo. they began to focus on water issues around the world. for instance, when i went to kenya as part of the research for "inside the outbreaks," the

cdc's doing something called the safe water system which teaches people to put dilute bleach in containers, and then they have narrow tops so you can't stick your hand in to dip anything out and repollute it. well, lo and behold there was coke paying for this program in elementary schools. so that was, that was very heartening to me. so i do take these allegations seriously, but in this particular case i think that they perceive more blame than they deserve. coca-cola has been having -- have you used these freestyle machines, anybody? yeah. they're kind of cool, aren't they? you can go, and you can choose different things. this is part of coca-cola trying to be more interactive with their advertising and with their marketing. they want to involve consumers. i that had -- they had a hidden camera when they were testing

this someplace in atlanta, and they caught a woman who kissed the side of the machine -- [laughter] that was quite funny. but you can sort of mix and match here in a modern version of what they used to call the suicide at the sew that fountain. soda fountain. and this is mutar kent who is -- by the way, neville usdale is from ireland originally, grew up in large measure in south africa, was an anti-apartheid activist when he was a student. and he brought back mutar kent to be his sort of second this command, and then when he retired in 2008 as the ceo, mutar kent took over. he's a turkish-american. his father was the ambassador to the united states and to many other countries as kent was growing up. his father was one of the people who saved jews during the holocaust from being sent to the

gas chambers. so this is kent who is very much a coca-cola man delivering the first case of coca-cola in myanmar, burma, leaving only -- last year -- leaving only cuba and north korea as places where you cannot legally buy coke. of course, you can buy coke there on the black market anyway. so, i mean, coke coal rah is the world's -- coca-cola is the world's most widely-distributed single product. it is probably the second best known word on earth after the word okay. i don't know if that's still true or not. [laughter] it, it has huge amounts of money flowing in. it has a really good profit margin. it also has given can huge amounts of money to good causes particularly ear in the city of atlanta -- here in the city of atlanta, but be they also have given a lot of money to the world wildlife fund, to aids

prevention and treatment in africa because they are the largest single private employer in africa. and and a number of other things that you probably don't know about. now, they have been blamed for the obesity epidemic, and they have reacted this year by coming out with ads saying we're part of the solution, not the problem. and and some of that rings quite hollow to me. for instance, they say, look, we've reduced how much sugary soft drinks and calories we give to children in schools. well, that's because they were basically forced out of schools in 2006. so now they're bragging about it. but they do offer about a quarter of their products now are low-calorie or no-calorie. and, again, this is good business because sugary soft drinks peaked in 1998 in terms of per capita consumption in the

united states, and they've been dipped canning down -- dwindling down. they came out recently with coke zero which is aimed primarily at men who don't like to say a drink is a diet drink. and it uses the real coca-cola formula whereas diet coke doesn't. i think at some point in the future the combined sales of diet coke and coke zero will surpass regular coca-cola. so, but -- and, you know, a 12 ounce can of coca-cola has nine teaspoons of sugar in it or, well, high fructose corn high-fructose corn syrup in this country, that's a lot of sugar. so they should be held accountable not for the entire obesity epidemicking but for trying to encourage people to drink a huge amount of these sugar-laden sodas. the thing that i wish they would do and i'm very glad that they're supporting exercise

programs and that they're -- i'm glad that they're paying attention to this issue. i wish they would not spend be millions of dollars through the american beverage association to fight taxes on soda. i think that they should embrace that, because, you know, until they put high taxes on cigarettes, you know, you can preach to people til you're blue in the face. but preaching doesn't make people change their behavior. money makes people change their behavior. so i -- and this is a controversial thing to say even among nutritionists, but i think that we should have higher taxes on sugary beverages because it will reduce the consumption. but they're not likely to agree with me. this is from the company web site from january of this year announcing their efforts to beat one of the most serious, complex issues of this generation, obesity, and i applaud them for

doing that, and they're right. they now offer something like 3,500 drinks around the world. this is a company that offered one drink in one side until 1955. and they've done that in large measure by buying a lot of other companies. like they spent $4 billion, $4.1 billion to buy glasso which makes vitamin water last year. they're not that nimble in creating new drinks, but they have a section of people who just look at new drinks and try to find the next winner so they can buy it. the future for coca-cola and for other soft drink companies is china. where they have formed business partnerships with the chinese government, and the chinese government has committed many human rights abuses including right before the 2008 olympics in beijing which coca-cola paid

for the olympic torch run. they cracked down hard on tibet, and that was a huge issue just a few years ago. so there's a lot of politics involved. oh, i wanted to mention one other thing about politics. coca-cola has been involved with getting various presidents elected beginning most those my with eisenhower who was a great buddy of robert woodruff. and then when jimmy carter was running for president, coca-cola was very helpful to him. and carter, when he was the governor, called coca-cola his state department because when he went to a foreign country, he could ask the coca-cola people for the lowdown on the politics and everything else, and they would know it better than anybody else. i thought i would mention that since i'm here. [laughter] at the carter center. and with that, i think i will

turn this off and thank you very much for your attention in this long. [applause] >> we have time for about 10 or 15 minutes' worth of questions. please, raise your hand and wait for the microphones and then ask your question. why don't we begin right there. >> you'd mentioned that coke zero had the original coke flavoring as opposed to diet coke which does not. can you address why diet coke has more caffeine than coke zero? >> why it has more caffeine than coke zero? >> look at the can. >> i did not know that. >> diet coke has 46 milligrams per 12-ounce can, coke zero has 34 as does the drink you're drinking. >> uh-huh. i have no idea why. why do you think that would be in. >> i think it's to keep the skinny folks jittery. [laughter]

>> that could well be the case. [laughter] see? i don't know everything about coca-cola. >> my question is, um, i just two weeks ago i toured the corporate headquarters of coca-cola, so it's weird seeing their version of what coca-cola is and more of an unbiased version. and i kind of had a couple comments, because they gave me some of the facts, and maybe you though or maybe you don't know is that on that "times" article when it had the world with coca-cola, they originally wanted robert woodruff to be on the cover, but he didn't want to be x that's why they didn't put the symbol. and the other one is for the freestyle machines and all of the modern machines, you can't actually buy them, but it's her of renting them from coca-cola. so like with their high technology. >> right. they don't even call them

vending machines, they call them soda fountains. you're absolutely right that robert woodruff refused -- you know, robert woodruff was known as mr. anonymous. he didn't really like attention. and he didn't want to be on the cover of "time." and he didn't want people cupping him for -- dunning him for money either. so when ralph mcgill wrote ab article called the millionaire nobody knows, woodruff wasn't that happy about it. but let me just clarify something. you did not take a tour of the corporate headquarters. you took a tour of the world of coca-cola museum. is that right? >> [inaudible] >> oh, you really did get to go to the corporate headquarters? [laughter] at north avenue? whoa, i'm impressed. the world of coca-cola museum, as you know also, every time i go there i ask the guide whether coca-cola ever had cocape in it -- cocaine in it, and they always tell me no.

[laughter] you know, it hasn't had any in so long, you know, i don't see why they can't to that. but, yeah, that sounds like a fascinating tour you had. >> just very recently i learned, i read that the person who actually combined the syrup with the carbon dioxide was a guy named venable connected to the snow mountain venables, ask i confirmed that with a member of the family. that's the first time i'd ever heard that. have you heard about that? >> willis venable ran the pharmacy in 1886, so he would be the first person who mixed it together with carbonated water, that's absolutely true. there is a myth that coca-cola was accidentally mixed with cash cash -- carbonated water, but it was intended to be mixed with it right along, and that's what venable did. and is, you know, carbonated drinks came out of this tradition of thinking that

waters at spas, naturally carbonated waters were good for you, and then jost priestly in the -- jost priestly in the late 1700s figureed out how to artificially carbonate things. and that's why a lot of the soda fountains were in pharmacies, was because it was supposed to be good for you. >> i've traveled around internationally a lot, and i've found that every country i've been to the coke tastes a little bit different. does it have to do with the water, or do they change the formula a little bit depending on the audience, i guess? >> coca-cola is very proud of the fact that they have a uniform product anywhere in the world, and they would dispute what you just said. however, i think that the main difference is cane sugar. they put real sugar in coca-cola in countries in the world. they don't do that in the united states because we have a protect i tariff.

so high-fructose corn syrup is cheaper. so there's a whole kind of gourmet coca-cola imported from mexico that people will pay a lot of money for now. but it's possible that there are other differences. i'm not aware of them. >> this is a political question. i think coca-cola's a pretty good company in the united states, and it's that way because many of us made it become a better company because of a time when, you know, you couldn't buy a bottling company if you were an african-american. but i've been working with coca-cola for the last ten years in brazil where they've head their largest investment in the world. and as you may know, brazil is about 50/50 african and 50% caucasian. but africans in brazil are not afforded opportunities to advance in coca-cola. and we've been trying to tell

them the fallacy of that. and i hope it don't blow up on them with the world cup and to olympics heading to brazil as we speak. >> and this is joe beasley, i believe. >> that's correct. >> and you've been an activist trying to get coca-cola to behave itself in terms of racial issues for quite some time, is that correct? >> absolutely. all over the world. and i think unless coca-cola changes its africa market, they're going to have tremendous problems in because most of the ownership -- and coke is a great growth product in africa. but the ownership of coca-cola africa is outside of africa. and i believe in the information age that's going to kind of blow up on them. we want to help them. we like coca-cola. we want to help them be a better company, and i hope they'll listen. >> what do you think of -- they make a big deal of the fact that

in africa paragraph particularly they have these little drink stands that sell a few things besides coca-cola and that they really do help many people to make a living. >> well, that's true, but nonetheless, the big bucks are being made by the shareholders. >> uh-huh. >> and the shareholders are not the africans. and we've cautioned coke about that, to restructure themselves. so i hope they will heed -- we're still in the helping mode. we don't want to get in the mode where we start litigating again like in brazil which i think is a distinct possibility. i'm talking to some of the same lawyers that we sued coke for $192 million judgment as you'll recall in 19 -- >> this is for the racial discrimination lawsuit. >> yes, yes. >> in the united states. >> yes. >> i recall that. i wrote about that. i do not know about brazil, so let me talk to you after this event, please. >> all right. >> thank you.

>> i found your presentation fascinating. i'm actually a coca-cola employee, i'll be having my 30th anniversary as a coke employee next month, and so two very small corrections to a couple things that you said. first of all, actually agree with you about coke always wanting to have kind of a known product and a, something that when you get a coke anywhere in the world, you know what you're going to get. but we do actually modify it somewhat for local tastes. so coke in mexico will be a little bit sweeter than somewhere else that you go in the world that also uses sugar, same sweetener, but the local tates preference is a little bit different. >> well, there you go. so the woman was correct. >> second factoid is that you can get coca-cola in cuba, i've been there twice and have been able to purchase it without problem. the difference is that it is sold by our mexican independent

bottler, and so you can't have direct, you know, there's no direct relationship with any kind of commerce that goes on in cuba. but certainly, mexico has very good relations with cuba -- >> so you don't have to buy it on the black market. >> no, it's available in restaurants pretty much. not messily only where locals go, it's quite expensive with respect to the local economy, but for tourists -- >> it's no problem. >> it's very easy to find. >> i wonder if that's true in north korea. >> that may -- [laughter] >> well, thank you. i'm relieved that those are the only two things that you noted that i got wrong. thank you. >> i understand that there are people that have seen the original formula of coca-cola. i mean, not the original, but the present formula for coca-cola, and one of them being rabbi tobias getthen of atlanta so that he could pass on

judgment whether or not coca-cola was kosher for passover. that has been a legend here in atlanta, and i do know that coca-cola sells coke for passover that orthodox jews do consume. >> i do know about this. i -- let me, let me interrupt you a second. the rabbi was the one who did verify that coke was kosher in the 1930s, and it was very important to coke that he do so. they did not give him the formula. they gave him the ingredients. they didn't -- it's an important distinction. i looked through his papers very carefully. and i'm pretty sure about this. they did change the formula because of him. they had glycerin made from animal fat, and they changed that, and they changed something else too. let me mention one other thing that's really interesting. i said coca-cola was doing well inside nazi germany during the 1930s. a german competitor who put up

something called africola came to the united states and went on a tour of a bottling plant in new york, and he swooped up some bottle caps that had the coacher sign on them, brought them pack to germany and -- back to germany and made huge stink about how coca-cola was this jewish drink inside germany. >> i wanted to ask you also, i'm a shareholder in coca-cola, and and since i retired i go to the annual meetings since they hold them in atlanta. and do you comment many your book about the -- in your book about the old boy network amongst the directors where it's self-we pep waiting? -- perpetuating? i mean, now tear beginning to get some newer blood, but it's still an old boy network. >> yeah. >> and i wonder if you'd comment on that. >> well, i commented on that they have a rather elderly board be of directors and that there's been a lot of comment about that. but that's about as far as i

went. i went to the annual meeting last year. i didn't go to the one this year. it was interesting. the one last year, the killer coke people had this coordinated thing of point of order to, you lie. point of order, you lie. did they do that this year? >> yes. [laughter] >> what's coke's relationship with emery and georgia tech universities? >> well, i don't know as much about georgia the tech, but i do know that, you know, stretching back to asa candler who gave a million dollars to emery at oxford to help them move to atlanta and then robert woodruff gave a huge amount, millions and millions, to emery so that, you know, emery has always been known as coca-cola university. i don't know as much about georgia tech.

you could probably tell me. >> i know that the architect, robert smith, who did the original coca-cola bottling company buildings also did the original georgia tech campus. >> well, that would make sense because they're all right near each other. yeah. thank you. >> let's do two more questions. >> two more questions. >> first of all, fortunately, if anyone cares, i find that you can get coca-cola with sugar at kroger this their ethnic, and it's only a dollar a bottle. otherwise, was there any taught of keeping the new coke and the classic coke, or once they brought the classic back, the new -- the demand for new coke, which was supposed to replicate pepsi, just died out? >> uh-huh. well, first, let me say they did

keep both of them for quite some time. roberto absolutely refused to admit that new coke was a failure or that -- he kept, he drank new coke himself, and he said this is the real coca-cola, and we've just brought back coke classic for the few misguided people who prefer it. [laughter] but, in fact, it did not do well. i thought what you were going to ask, which is an interesting question, is did they consider keeping the old coke and coming out with new coke in the first place x they did consider that. but they quickly rejected it because that would have split their market, it would have had two coca-colas which was inconceivable to them, and it was quite possible that pepsi would have surpassed, you know, one or the other of them to be the best selling soft drink in the country. now, by the way, pepsi is the third best selling soft drink in the country. coca-cola is number one and diet

coke is number two. [laughter] so last question here. >> yes. i know that santa has quit smoking cigarettes -- [laughter] in ads at least. i was wondering if there's any progress on santa reducing his coke intake -- [laughter] and losing some weight. [laughter] >> that's a brilliant idea. i think -- wouldn't that make a great ad campaign? santa drinking coke zero and slimming down? [laughter] i think, i think you're on to something. perhaps you will take this back to the company. [laughter] yeah, so thank you very much. i believe that's about it. [applause] >> i think you'll agree it's been a fascinating evening. if you have not already got a

copy of the book, i encourage you to get one. mark's going to be signing them in the lobby. please join us. let's give mark a round of applause. thanks very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. >> i'll see you out there then. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> you watching -- you're watching booktv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. >> now on booktv from the 20th annual eagle forum collegiate summit, james antle discusses his book, "devouring freedom: can wig -- big government be stopped?" >> this morning talking about the dangers of centralized control and an overreaching government and how what a profound effect it can have on