sides that would be an important source. fact is a big question that i think there is a lot of different things we need to do. >> host: i agree that people learn not paying attention that if you're not outraged then you are not paying attention one of the first things is when they spent time in the criminal courthouse in terms of race or class like you never see a white person because every once in awhile a person involved with drugs but it does not reflect the demographic there is something wrong with that but likewise, but the poor

people in justice something that feels not fair and not right. not that they are a big fan of crime, we don't celebrate we have the same feelings as anybody else. we are worried about certain kinds of crime but it is the land of support -- land of the pork. but then you look at the courthouse to see how little time is given to each case sometimes there were subtle disparities sometimes not. from your perspective you have to project to have the

judgment said is a decent predictor of outcomes but yet as often as not that is a really hard to sing because sometimes you cannot predict the things that have been in courts and the random testimony of judges award juries. there is the of fairness. >> so really it is the problem that with my recollection with the former prosecutor's but but it depends on who you get and what judge you get sometimes let police officer in the demeanor they will give you a break and if not then you are toast.

that seems to be the problem even going in to visiting said jails which is the random this kid you make it through the metal detector or not? that is what seems to be there on the side of prosecution smith the contributors our excellent but the reality is i am ashamed that every day there is somebody that taps me on the shoulder do you know who my lawyer is? they have no idea. they have not met them. fifth we were in trouble could you imagine not knowing who your lawyer was?

they are swept through the system and they have no idea how to navigate. >> one thing i will say this the manufacturer of crime with the undercover sting is the best for the drugs or prostitution try to solicit prostitution and other undercover sting is like robbery's like the police officer with the iphones at all levels of randomness that devotes resources. >> host: i like to close on a positive note.

what advice would you give to young lawyers are students from a positive note you don't want to give them all the bad stuff so we will scare them. >> we are happy defenders. [laughter] >> we love our work. >> all these things we have talked about should be inspiring. it gives them something to fight for. there is no job that is more exciting. never a dull moment that you think it is my job boring.

so where the judge judge already signed the sentencing document. you just cannot make the stories up you will never be bored i promise. >> one of my favorite designed story giving the closing argument that the rattling behind him the client opening of the pockets of cash and jewelry because he knows he goes down. so true the lifelong criminal defense lawyers some are career public defenders and they talk about why they still have the chops for the work area and also the death penalty lawyer wondering if he does this for ever but it is not for everyone but if you feel you have the making of a

criminal defense lawyer you will not have a more meaningful careers of everybody should read the book. >> thank you.

[applause] i could listen to him all night. introduction is a pleasure to be back at the exhibit again. for these species to come back alive after they were part of an exhibit shows how when science is changing. talking about my new book to night "life at the speed of light" based in those small part of a lecture i was invited to give last year in

public at a community college following up from 1943 with a series of lectures as a physicist you define life to see if they put the physical principles he largely concluded that it did. he wrote a book based on the lectures. it is a tiny book i have read several times called what is life but it influences a tremendous amount of modern science and i will show you why if you have not read the book. the short answer is it foresaw a lot of discoveries that have been made over the last 70 years at a time when people had no idea what the genetic code was zero or where it would go.

so i started the book is how can the events of space and time be accounted for by physics and chemistry? he also heads the bat with the inability of the present day science could space explain everything but that was no reason to doubt they would not be accounted for. and what he described was from physical principles to supply is what he ultimately called the coach script that could repeat remarkably simple in did not have to be

complex as the basis of all but the first to say it could be as simple as the pioneer recovered with the major form of communication as being sufficient you have a tremendous diversity. from 1944 with this debt but blue dash definition with the leading biologist that said dna was too simple of a molecule the backboard and on dash backboard to help support the every petty was certain was the basis of inheritance. in reality it was very wrong but it did the not matter based on the assumptions about the script.

also the first conclusive the experiment took place to prove dna was the genetic material so there was a famous experiment done that was simple white to use the series of different enzymes that destroy protein and tna2 pro -- prove it was a key to transforming factor but people were really focused the first was sequenced a few years later and to this proved or a very specific when your sequence. people in this timeframe actually thought favor just a loose combination of

substances and not distinct linear chemicals. obviously the work estimating and estimating on the double helix to agree it's the thinking quite a bit the template when published by nature not a lot of attention was paid to use the paper a and it took awhile not until the 1960's what the dna code was and how triplet letters were coded for amino acids for brett this stage to the fear

that the dna that other had been done. but with the more understanding so with a molecule that brings up ribosome so these discoveries went together to took them as a huge step forward the next decade could start to make changes and that key discovery that to enable this was what my friend and colleague made to discover the first

prescription and they shared the nobel prize but aid number of people were able to take the new tools to use them for erratic purposes so not only did the idea of a change but also did the codes so rights that after they've made the first experiments work a and rapidly develop and to have human insulin being produced out of bacteria. with whole biotech industry taking off. genomics still at variance pretty slowly not intel 1976 the first genome had a small

fibrous, defied and then again it was the key to know that we come back to a little over 5,000 of genetic code that was a major breakthrough as he got his sequencing technology now as referred to as sager sequencing. there was another 80 year gap from the small fibers is to the genome of the living organism accomplished at the institute in 1995 and this is all office just to show you we went from 5,000 letters of genetic code of

but eight to million letters and only five years later that we could scale up using that genome shotgun technique to go up that 3 billion letters of genetic code. when we read that genetic code i describe it as digitizing biology we have been doing this quite a while to take the floor letter code into one series of the computer we have been getting were data over tied and understanding the fundamental basis to go back to that script described. at the same tape -- the same

time all of these advances taking place in the d and a world cup in this history of proteins i thought that was inapt description a and these are the instruments through the genetic programs are transferred from the of linear code but not you can see within that all the instructions hall stable they are a and what they do. everybody is familiar with the types of proteins that make up the living world around us. these have a wide sets of ranging proteins.

and they're built into the bloodier code with know if they've spent. a head to show you how recent some of these findings are these are from 2005 with the complete high resolution structure of the ribosome was determined. if there is a fundamental motor as stingy one of the engines or voters this is the most important motor of the cell because this is where though linear code of that dna is converted into proteins. appreciating these complex three-dimensional structures is very important that now another area may be quite a while to understand but it actually took the blue jean

computer at ibm to do is a compilation. to contain with the protein of amino acids between tutus the 100th power of possible confirmation. so each protein has to try the combinations it would take 10 billion years for one of those principles discovered comedies process these happen with 1,000 of the second. so named lucky at paul and molecules' under the microscope with the ability

to move around but it took about 75 years before einstein came along to actually show this movement that we see under any microscope so life is driven by the basic physical property of molecule's so we see that in the static for this but they constantly jiggle and gyrate in and rotate team and spin in people describe it as the of the equivalent of an earthquake going on constantly inside yourself so if you think of the process and the biological system with this shaking and movement so as long as it

would never go back you don't have to peddle but to show one example of modeling that has been done of six microseconds here is in extended period of a small peptide and going from the olivier covered but when it happens in reality of six microseconds but dna is constantly moving and shaking from this energy allowing proteins based on the bloodier code to form into the final confirmation the lowest energy states and it gives them their function. now they are constantly moving so it is very dynamic

if you look inside each cell with the constant shaking and moving also is a linear code from the dna is something that determines the absolute stability called the end rule of degradation codes for how fast that could be broken down or turn over. they turn over in a matter of seconds or minutes. people don't realize how dynamic our 200 trillion cells are. they change from second to second because they read the genetic code to get information. if you take the d.a.'s office or out of the cell they will die very quickly.

the protein turnover this single most process because of the shaking the proteins end up being very unstable economic new ones the cells will die if they cannot degrades the protein it is not the york city but it has looked at times when the press stops at a funeral and then staying sarnoff inoperable ourselves embodies and prayed works the same way. there is a lot of diseases were the proteins are not trafficked out properly. cystic fibrosis one of the most widely genetic disorders is due to a letter exchange. people thought it just affected the function but in

fact, it is the binding and how it folds it is never full the properly so you never get enough produced so there is less protein in the cell. it is all based on dynamic renewal if you cannot read the genetic code and then death results very quickly so even looking at human cells they vary from 45 minutes to a little under 24 hours. each of us shed around 500 million skin cells every day. that dust in your house? that is you and you wonder why you keep getting more dust you shed the entire layer of skin every two or four weeks just like the

blood cells that die and passed to be replaced every day. even during normal development of a child 50 percent of the cells die during a normal -- normal working development so every aspect of life of individuals at the cellular level is a constant dynamic. so we have concluded that all cells on the planet are dna driven machines. coming from the linear protein coat it determines their function or the breakdown. and to to come up with the notion of synthesis of proof

suppose of adisapproving it when he synthesized your rea is and 8028 it was not supposed to be made chemically because it was something that supposedly this was a change of a lot of thinking of scientific evidence. those published every year approved by synthesis we decided to try this approach to prove that dna was necessary for life the way we decided was the by garett code from the computer to design the dna molecule and

then find a way to boot it up. said to go from that digital code to insert a multitude of questions. fairly fundamental. order the minimum number of genes required for a life? those are based on a set of genes or gene functions. at the time we started this even making dna molecule is 1,000 letters long, we were not sure that chemistry would allow the of molecule's and reid did not know even if they could make that chemical dna but we

started down the road of synthesis and started where sanger did with key at the genome started with the sequence that sanger had published and hutchinson who had joined our team was a visiting scientist and was a co-author of the paper a and it had a relatively small latino -- she'd always its code. so to take small pieces of dna to put them together in math kids to make the 5,000 peace of dna. to be injected into e. coli the exciting thing is immediately starts to pump

resources the synthetic dna and made proteins and after millions of copies of virus were made the virus showed the gratitude by killing the cells. this is long e. coli bacteria would never racy that spot is where the massive amount was released. we called this a situation where the software builds the own hardware we just put in a piece of dna chemical software and what we got out of it were these that affect other e. coli cells. it was not just to make a small virus but the entire genome but we thought we could at least make these pieces is accurately but to

put them together with the entire chromosome. it took more than a few years to reduce this having been fed to techniques. a the small bacteria into 101% and three started to make the cassettes and put them together to make larger and larger pieces. and that is how it came about those that were 24,000 letters long in it each stage we have to make said dna and sequence to purify then go on to assemble.

you could see why this would be rowboat -- laborious with the whole team doing nothing but this for one year. one pieces 72,000 letters long one team had spent one but two of those together one-quarter of the genome but if this stage putting the large synthetic pieces into e. coli it did not like these pieces. we look for a new system that this where we get wine and beer and bread this

staple of the american diet will take the large pieces of dna and put them together. that uses a process where the sequence matches up. thought so to put these molecules on their own into a small factor to isolate them may put the pieces together fend the first synthetic we reported this 2008 at the time the molecule that defines because it was such a large linear sequence. the team improved the ability to assemble dna. we touched on early in the

process with a major breakthrough to take the steps individually and found you could do them all together an a single test tube at constant temperature and that reaction makes it very simple to put those pieces of dna to incubate and then you get the assembled piece of tea and a out of it and this is referred to if you can find songs about it and with that simplified method means we could now automates the process which would change the scale. so while the chemistry was

improving how do we do to up? another team was working quite a while that led the team with a major breakthrough 2007 in the book i describe this in some detail because this had more to do with my understanding how life works how it affects other people in the same way. we transplant aquino from one cell to another species than inverted -- converted to one species into the other because it is so fundamental to understand synthetic biology and how your cells work i will walk you through this.

either small bacterial self replicating cells as close to each other as mice and humans a little over 10 percent difference we isolated the chromosome and did what avery did six years earlier to remove all proteins to find out if we make chemically make it dna that there was not pertain required for transplantation. want is to select for the antibiotic for what the genome was activated and we came out with all kinds of ways to transplant into the recipient sells.

large chromosomes are very brittle so we have to develop techniques to move them around then at the last minute we could do that but where is the little movie i will show you what you think happened? it is very sophisticated. we have an unusual situation and coming to set its of genetic software. >> just like the fire the started to produce right away some included the restriction enzyme that actually you recognized the dna as foreign and chewed it up. now we have the body and a type of one species but the

genetic software of another. in a very short period of time we ended up with the right to sell sand would be interrogated them all of the program tour gone and any by all measurements was now this is critical to understanding evolution because it helps to show dna software is a system to change the software you change the species so with the enzymes in the first place if you want to maintain your species lineage did any piece of

chromosome to convert you to something else is like. >> ebullition will be a messy process. but that is how they defend themselves sickens to foreign tea and a. they shoot it up to maintain their own species. but so what they recognize recognize, of lot of cells have it can house since of genes that the time as full sets of functions come along an a single step. we had a unique probe on

dash and so we had to figure out a way to isolate. >> and the chromosome cells in this has as successful now like the microbial species a remarkable simple one dash simple stuff the center we are is that little objection pc and its essential for chromosomes' being transported properly in his cell was being ceramic. within converted but going

from pro jupon now we can isolate the chromosome into a transplant. when greeted this, we had a major problem. it did not work it took the team over two years to solve and the reason for it to is the bacterial system to protect themselves from their own it enzymes mutate said dna they have different systems of this was altered. so we isolate those different genes from the cell to methylate said dna after isolated from the east we could do successful genome plant can -- plantations again -- implantations again then we remove the restrictions from the recipient and that makes

the dna out of these but these steps to show you nine of these answer a straightforward linear process. we have to watch that it could set you back for years but the techniques derived are remarkable because they allow us to do things that were not possible that we considered before simply adding yeast to the bacterial chromosome that is now a yeast cell. most bacterial systems are not able to be studied because they are not genetic tools to work with. as soon as we move that we had a entire repertoire to allow for very rapid changes to ochre we can isolate and

vacillates is necessary to work our way around very rapid changes if the mets did already existed in you try to make synthetic dna in the first place but it is a very useful to small dash to also now we have these synthetic components to isolate out of used with its successful transplants and decide that it took quite a bit of convincing to abandon working on the smaller chromosome to make the larger genome. this was 1.1 million base pairs but it went very fast with technology. so we start with pieces

1,000 letters long and what 10 of those together they return thousand letters long been put 10 of those together that were 100,000 letters long. free had 11 major sets to assemble the entire chromosome. we had this done and were ready to do the major transplantation experience and was sure that it would work but nothing happened. the synthetic genome did not work. we knew there was something wrong with error code or design. software engineers have debugging software to find the errors. reid developed a biological debugging system to take each of these pieces one at a time to put them back into

the control genome to see if they supported life. it turns out 10 did put the last one did not. the three sequenced once again fell last. we had before but we reusing new technology and one of the problems with all their technology is it makes systematic errors. sometimes it is perfectly wrong so they went back and found a single letter to a region in it as a gene. read corrective that and remade the entire chromosome into the transplantation two days later we had the first synthetic sell. we knew it was because we could isolate the dna and

sequence. in 2010 it was the cover. but what we had done to prove there was developed a new code to rewrite the entire english language with numbers and punctuation with said dna code. we had water marks the first gino with this simple amino acid code but does not cover the entire alphabet. we have the names of the of 46 scientists, the code in the first watermark it was the secret decoders rain and this has the url built into its code and you were instructed to send an e-mail to the species at that

address to say you have been successfully decoded. once a number of people had worked it out the in line dash postage the institution but it is to have three quotations from the literature i thought were appropriate for the location. the first from james joyce. that seems highly relevant. the second was from oppenheimer's biography and in his case talking about developing the atom bomb but more forward-looking not to see things as they are bad as they might be to be optimistic. then what i cannot build i

understand. sophie were quite happy and stuff first response to a from the state attorney. [laughter] asking if we had permission to use the quotation. james joyce was dead. we could do miracles but not that. also under u.s. copyright we can use up to a paragraph without permission we did not worry about that too much. then we would get e-mail's from cal tech scientists saying we misquoted vital man who was also dead and we challenged this because if you look:the internet this is the'' you find over and over we asked him to validate so he sent a picture of the talk -- of the archives blackboard when

the original'' was written it is much better applied by cannot create i do not understand is part of the whole notion of proof by synthesis if you cannot replicate by building it you clearly do not understand it. so we acknowledge this to create that genetic code so it will rest peacefully with the proper quotation. so to go from the digital world we could make it or transplanted it so what comes next is the application what does the cell do that you made? it self replicates and does it billions of times to

metabolize sugars to make everything it needs. i thought that was good. it did that have any practical application. so getting computer software to design new dna software taking us and a lot of different directions we are close but not there yet on a completely computer designed solve that has half the genes and we have 10 working by knocking out the genes to understand the biology to understand a genome based on first principles but even with this 50 of the genes

that absolutely required for lifer of the unknown function so i designed a jet or automobile engine with 50 key parts you just know if you leave them out it will not work so the knowledge of biology has this empirical part that is ongoing but as we get further down the road we will function a lot of these genes. once to focus on early is to find a way to make much faster vaccine with the confluence pandemic h1n1 far lighter than anyone expected but we hata shot two months

after it peaked 250,000 have died either very young or very old so we tried to synthetically to change a processing and looking for things we could use the unique properties between the digital and biological world. because if we can send dna with the electromagnetic wave and reconstitute we could get samples to mars in 4.3 minutes we could be with the marcion's back to reconstitute in a secured lab instead of having them dropped into the ocean but

that is probably still the right way to do it. so it relies on this interplay between said dna software and the digital world so we can send a light at the speed of light and reconvert at the other and back into biology. we do this with to process these and to test it in the mojave desert to isolate these to be with them up to the cloud. for what we call a digital biological converter to convert that into proteins or viruses and there is a

lot of applications we d there a lot of applications we can see or seven days of flu virus to use that as a treatment for the antibiotic resistive bacteria we have ben working with no vargas for a long time with the first genome based vaccine against meningitis be it just came out earlier this year with the 70 year process but the first new major vaccine to come along obviously that will not work for the of flu pandemic and

this is why it is important the last time there was a major pandemic that was killed by the 1980 flu viruses has been recovered from people who died of the flu in 1918 am buried in the permafrost is so still had the life of flu virus was sequenced in reconstructive so we can understand the difference is but my issa to is part of a worldwide surveillance program using dna sequencer for mars to look at different outbreaks to send it up to six loud roar up to is the web to sequence those but recently

this was worth that outbreak the chinese from of the surveillance program posted it on the internet we down noted that digital information and with a very short time had a synthetic version and for quite awhile the only source of the cdc had to study the new emerging strain and of artists is is in the process to create a vaccine well in advance because the spreads rapidly and much higher than h1n1 we actually have a converter that requires manual intervention tea

other advanced bill fortis made for the flu virus around 900 million but novartis just got approval from the fda for the of flu vaccine so at this site in north carolina we have a digital biological converter to send the e-mail message with the flu sequence made very quickly to start down the line to make production but if one site works why not more? may be one in each country or one in each city? navy to see that a hypothetical version like in the movie contagion what could have been equivalent

to the 1918 flew distributed around we could respond quickly to a new outbreak and we would have a box on the home computer to download the vaccine from the internet and not have to leave your home and get contaminated. these devices will change how we view the internet instead of getting information to down the biology. is straight forward. with the ability to download insulin to quickly convert the dna into any direction. so that was all within the realm of theoretical potential.

it is not clear, it is. the fda will probably not like this process. it democratizes who has access to things much the way the internet has done. but it has potential. from the very beginning we have asked our own ethical questions and asked for a review is it okay to create life in the lab that has not existed before. studies have been published the first published in 1999 to discuss these things extensively in the book. we announced in 2010 the first synthetic sell and it is the number one challenge they issued this report december of that year you can download this from the

white house web site. i think a government report i could not have asked for a better job to talk about the strengths of the potential and the dangers should be regulated or not? and do things in science that should be funded to put the kill switch so they cannot survive outside the lab. . .

[inaudible] >> i want to encourage those who have questions to come on up. >> when you made your synthetic so what did you put the dna into? was it an existing cell that was reprogrammed to become the cell you are looking for? >> we put it into the cell which is what we were using as our recipient cell and it converted into what was coded for by the new cell. >> the idea that dna has it digital code that can be downloaded and so on how does that extend to more complex organisms and important in how

traits are inherited and expressed? >> we are not ready to breed humans across the universe although i somewhat jokingly thought as my genome being sequenced 14 years ago is being broadcast into space for quite a while so if you see an army coming back don't be too shocked. but obviously even single cells have a lot more levels of koldyke elation but one thing you should be cognizant of is epigenetic phenomenon are still based on genetics. everything in the cell is coded for initially by the dna. the properties of the proteins and the processes get there all the specifications from that and as the cells get more complex

those processes get more complex. there is an effort now, european effort to try to make the entire bcg eyed gnome in a massive effort like the public genome effort over the next five years to remake yeast replacing a little bit of the chromosomes one at a time but because everything involves from the genetic code as soon as he gets red the cell remakes everything that it's going to need. the yeast will be a lot simpler in reality than working with that serial cells. is protein decay similar to atomic decay and does the radio decay affect its use within the cell? >> is similar in the sense that different proteins do they have their own half-lives determined largely by the amino acid and

yes some has a half-life of seconds, some minutes and some hours and that very much determines their processing and that is part of how cells are regulated. something that the previous speaker referred to as epigenetic phenomenon so some proteins or hormones get to created fast and you can remake them as they are needed. the half-life of all the different proteins in your cells varies against the prospect of 20,000 some proteins. >> thank you. your story of a single bass player change triggered a question on what you might think the limits of computational biology could be, which is when, if ever, do you think we would be able to computationally

predict the statistical impact of a single change on the phenotype? >> i think that's a great question. i devote not an insignificant part of the book talking about all the attempts to digitally model and most of the studies are based on the microcosmic genomes and a group at stanford has gotten closer to anybody else but it involves 125 different algorithms and a lot of complex computation. we have been trying to see if they can model what we are trying to make with this minimal cell and it turns out you can't model it in the computer if you don't know the function because we are in this empirical phase until we know the function of all the proteins you can't model it very accurately. i think people are getting a lot closer than they have in the past. as soon as the datasets are fairly complete the modeling

will be straightforward and we hope it can be used to simplify the next stages of processing so we can get very scientific. if we make this change it will work and we are a long way from that because of all the genomes in biology. >> how long? >> how long? from my understanding the human genome could be the rest of the century at that level. >> thank you for your work. two questions, one very brief. what is your favorite science-fiction inspiration and what if any quantum physics are being done with this for quote spooky effects in honor of halloween? [laughter] >> nothing specifically for halloween but i will give you some hints in the book. i quote from isaac madison off

the three laws of robotics plus the zero law so that is not a bad place to start. a lot of people that work in science what seemed like science fiction 50 years ago now seems like conservative ideas. >> i have two questions. the first is of those 50 genes you mentioned necessary for life but whose functions we don't know, what% of them are they of all the genes in synthetic life and the second is all those 50 genes, are any of them similar to genes of other organisms? >> both good questions. i don't want to give you a precise number because then you would know how many genes it takes for life but on the order of 10%. yes, initially when we had all

these unknown genes in the first genomes we sequenced a lot of people speculated that they were going to be species specific genes and not very important. it turns out they are highly concerned in all branches of life in most cases but we still don't know what they are because you can't get a grant to study an unknown gene so it's kind of an oxymoron how we approach science. you have to know the answer before you can study it but it will come out of these studies because we will be able to decipher its function in the contest of the synthetic cell. >> thank you so much. two or three years ago i read an article about lincoln labs at m.i.t. and i think the head investigator there was todd rider. he was developing something called draco like the harry potter character and it apparently was able to look at the dna of any virus and create

a cure. they had shown that it worked for a thing 10 different completely unrelated viruses. i apologize if it's the poor forum to ask about someone else's work and i've been scouring the internet for more news about it for two years finding nothing and i was wondering if you were from a a refitted if you had a view on that? >> i have not heard of it which probably means it didn't really work. you can find lots of that on the internet. >> for someone like me who has no background in biology i have a natural paranoia about the dangers of synthetic -- what reassuring words do you have to say? >> well you know as indicated not only in the book but in reality it's something we spend a lot of time and effort on.

the conscientious scientists want their science and discoveries to be used for the good of humanity and not for its demise. we don't need help on the demise side of the of -- equation so looking at the security around the processes we have worked very closely with various branches of the government. when we made the synthetic genome before we published that it was actually because it was funded at the department of energy. it was actually extensively reviewed not just by the bush administration but at the level of the white house to decide whether our data should be classified or published. not being a real fan of the bush administration i have to say one thing it did for the good of science and humanity.

open publication which was a welcome surprise and totally the right decision on this because these are breakthroughs that are happening on a global basis and it's that's more important to understand the technology and how it can be used. on the security side, when people looked including from all branches of our government and other governments this question of workshops that friedman shared and you can find a report on our web site with this, the conclusion was because you can go to virtually any farm in this country and if there is a dead cow you will find anthrax there. getting your hands on you know bacteria and viruses that can cause great harm to populations it's not hard to do. somebody doesn't have to try to remake it synthetically for that to happen. the notion you know small

changes in viruses or back. that affect infectivity are not well understood so deliberately saying they are going to design something to kill large numbers of people. i don't necessarily find huge comfort in that and the solution , anytime there is an imbalance in warfare there is a major change. so the solution if we need to be concerned about biological warfare at all we tend to ignore it is the same solution that we need for what's happening now with antibiotic resistant organisms that are killing more people a year than car crashes are in the u.s.. we need new antibiotics and new anti-viral agents. if we have a good repertoire of those we don't have to fear biological warfare.

i think emerging infections as the population keeps going up in getting dentzer is a far bigger threat for humanity than deliberate in making something but doesn't rule out something we would try. >> the final question for tonight. >> there are only two people left so we can get into questions. all right, the final question. >> the previous guy kind of stole my question. >> let's go to the next guy then. [laughter] >> i will say it in a different way maybe. in 2002 at curt said that he synthetically made the polio virus in a test tube and i believe you are a big critic of that at the time and i was wondering if your opinion had changed or if it is the same? >> i describe it in my book, what i was a critic of was they were doing interesting science and it took three years for them

to make their version of the polio virus. instead of continuing in dealing with out as a scientific paper and the scientific accomplishment, they dealt with it as a political warning instead of sticking to the norms of science. i think what he did was good work and was even taking place using a different approach than what we were taking. for some reason, he sort of panicked with his own data and used it more to try to scare people than then inform people and that is what i was critical of. >> if you would please join me again in thanking dr. venter. [applause] we will be having a book signing following the talks so we do

encourage you to either purchase the book and if you have already join us for the book signing. thank you. >> host: now on booktv we want to introduce you to stephen

randolph who is the historian of the u.s. department of state. dr. randolph what do you do? >> guest: i direct the history program and i have 45 historians working for me most of them ph.d. historians from predominantly diplomatic history and area studies backgrounds. we have a series of missions. the one that brings you here i think today is that we published the foreign relations of the united states series but just to make sure we understand the context the other third of the office do historical analyses in support of policymaking at the state department into the normal official history aspects of documented history of the department. so incredibly productive and interesting work that i get to do. the foreign relations series began in 1961 actually with the request from congress were some of the documentation associated with the diplomacy of the opening of the civil war and its continued ever since then which is a series of incredible

miracles i think that the series has survived and matured as it has. we operate now under a law passed in 1991 in the immediate aftermath of the cold war which put the series in the first time on a statutory basis. it's the viable history of american foreign relations since diplomatic activity. it provides access to archives from all across the governments of the intelligence community the department of defense the national security council and state department obviously and mandates that we try to publish this material within 30 years of the events as they occurred and we are very good at that part of our mandate except for the thirty-year part which we are working on. our historians and we have about 20 of them that our primary compilers go out to the presidential libraries in various archives in different

agencies amass the material and come back here and select from the thousands of documents they come up with generally 300 to 350 that tell the development and execution of policy and then it goes within the office to an editorial process to different levels of editing and once that is all cleaned up we send it to her declassification coordination -- coordinators have extremely accommodating granular task of decoding declassification across the different agencies the intel and department of defense and once that is taking care of we send it to her editors. we have about six editors on staff here and they are what i call the goalkeepers for quality. one of the aspects of the program that surprised me when i got here which was a couple of years ago, i use the series as a researcher with my academic work and teaching in my prior existence. i was surprised to find it's

extremely rigid discipline and editorial process and standards that are kept here and are extremely important in the overall value of the series. the ideas not just to publish the documentary history but to tell the community where to go to get the rest of the story and where they can find the right documents and that's dumped in the footnoting and annotation that is done. >> host: stephen randolph, is it because of the classified materials that it takes up to 30 plus years to published the official history? >> guest: pretty much. the timeline to publish has expanded gradually throughout the entire history of the series. when it first began up until a century ago in fact it was basically kind of a working compilation of the ongoing diplomacy of the department. they would publish one years documents the following year and overtime for various reasons the publication date slipped further

and further from the date of the activity and now by law, material 25 years old is subject to declassification review. we get access to material at 25 and try to publish it by 30 but given the complexities of the process and the declassification in the editorial and publication process takes of course considerable time and a challenge to get toward that 30 your point. >> host: to you base it on presidential's? >> guest: yeah we do and that will change over the course of the history. there have been various editorial strategies used but now for example we are working predominantly in the carter administration and working with the nixon administration and ford material through declassification and publication process. the carter material is the heart of our current endeavor but we are working on 22 values of the

reagan administration as well so by a total we have about 68 volumes right now which is a wide margin to largest documented history program on earth. before you set aside the other functions of the office in declassification and access issues we face is as a huge and complicated endeavor. >> host: do you cover soup to when you talk about foreign relations and foreign policy? >> guest: it's an aspect of the series that has matured with diplomacy and something that i'm proud of. with respect to how we approach an administration when i first got here a couple of years ago we were just beginning to kind of across the pond at the reagan administration coming down the line. we had to figure out how to organize the series. we have a series of processes that you go through. what are the major issues and major crises that they go through red what are the ongoing

lines of diplomacy? what are your resources if you are going to publish anything with close to 30 years you have to make sure you have the staff to work on it rapidly enough to meet the statutory requirement. we sat down upfront realizing that rings change once you go into the box and find the archives. we laid out an overall plan for the series that comprise comprised of 46 volumes just through the reagan administration we did 64 for the nixon administration and 30 for the card administration. by the time we are done and typically we make a plan to vector our efforts toward the mainline activity administration and then as i say once you get into the archives you don't want to be so inflexible that you aren't able to respond to what you're finding. these are the best researchers on earth sitting outside of my office here. what has happened over time as diplomacy has its faults and the

role of the state department and the means of government decision-making about diplomacy and change the series has changed to accommodate all those things. it's part of the real beauty. the law was passed in 1991 that anticipated all of that and it is made this series the gold standard for similar cities around the world. >> host: is their editorializing? >> guest: we are forbidden from doing that and we have no desire to do that. it's something that the editorial process among other things is meant to make sure that we avoid our historians are out there. one reason why this is not a narrative history that would tend to be interpreted almost by definition, even just in doing documentary history is hard to avoid bias. we have the historians do this work under the supervision of the division chief who does a careful review of both the

substance of the material cited in the end occasion. then it goes through the general editor for the final quality to make sure we achieve the statutory mandate. that is the bar we are over in its ready high bar so we are accurately libel. >> host: sub tree behind your some of the volumes of the foreign relations of the united states. are these accessible to the american public? >> guest: that's a good news stories we have. first of all, yes they are and the beauty of what is ongoing as we speak we have over the past several years transitioned into the world of digital publication in just over the last year we have formatted mobile devices. of ivan ipad at home with 15 of these volumes stored. it's just a marvelous utility both for the individual research and the office as a whole. we have this material mounted on our web site.

we get 4 million hits a year. this stuff gets downloaded over the year -- world. it includes a lot of people who learn about their nation's foreign policy in large part by access to our volumes. >> host: what is your background? >> guest: i had a career in the air force. i grew up on a farm in the san joaquin valley and went to the air force academy 27 years for car -- retired as the colonel fighter pilot and on the joint staff during the bosnia wars. i got to look at the interagency process which is then hugely important with my job here understanding how it works in practice and toward the end of my grant went to the national defense university and started work on a doctoral program at the university. over the 15 years i was on the faculty i went from military

faculty to civilian to department chair to associate dean and got a doctorate along the way and got contacted by the state department about two and a half years ago. they contact contacted me as a historian and asked me to come to work here and that got me thinking and here we are. >> host: dr. randolph who uses these volumes and reads these? >> guest: first of all there is a thematic and philosophical answer. the real purpose of this volume is to provide the transparency and accountability with democracy. if you don't have insight into what your government is doing you can't create that understanding and accountability there are various proxies that have changed over time. when the series first started it was primarily an internal audience within the state department with working documents but as the series has a faults i say at this point there are several primary audiences. first of all you policymakers across government studying the

antecedents to the issues and very often they are the same issues either identical or in a similar guise. the educational establishment when i was at the national defense university for example we use the material to teach the upcoming senior leadership of government and the military about strategic decision-making and how the government works. the most visit will and active audience was the academic community. we have a historical advisory committee that was mandated by the 1991 law that created our overall act to be at this point. most of those members are represented as a major historical political science the american society for international law is represented there and what we find is that our immediate feedback in whatever good or bad we do is

most often noticed by the academic community. what we create here i think is the foundation to the understanding of how this government performs in the world of foreign relations. you have to do a lot of work in addition to what we provide which you can't avoid going through this pathway that we have established. >> host: two other departments have historians with the same mandates? >> guest: they really don't. in fact i just returned from a conference of my counterparts from around the world stage and geneva. they all have some general form of a program like we do but nothing remotely resembling the scale or the power with which we address this mandate. the other historical programs around the government most of them are narrative history with a lot of military history programs that tend to be the largest but we are the only ones

particularly to did the documentary history program. i've often regretted that there is no counterpart in the civilian world to look at domestic policy but that would be more complicated than what we do so i will leave that to others. >> host: when you have been through some of these past volumes has anything surprised you? >> guest: there's a surprise in every document to tell you the truth trade a scholar of the nixon administration and vietnam war my dissertation covered that so that is kind of when i read volumes for fun i look at vietnam material so far shouldn't call that fun but on every page there something adventurous. part of the reason why i like coming to work not only serving the right purpose in terms of providing transparency to the american peep but every document i look it tells a story. bush is going for a compilation

of one of my new historians put together on relations between united states and the soviet union during the early reagan years and that will come out two or three years after the classification and editorial process but just to see how this transition from the carter to ministers the reagan years happened and how they proceed from the general attitude towards this relationship to try to define specific policies working through the government is just riveting material. to see the interplay and personality so every volume has some form of that and it's just a matter of time until we get the stuff out. >> host: of people watching this interview want to access the material what's the best access? >> guest: history.state.gov. it's the web site my office is created and will find 11 dataset on the different material. you have the history of the department and biographies of the secretaries of state. you have what we call the

milestones in american foreign policy and the decisions and themes that have evolved over time. in addition to all of that you will find it digitize foreign relations volumes. not only are we publishing an addition to an earlier question, publishing out everything in digital form and very selectively and hardcopy to save save on the publication costs but we are also the digitizing the origination of the series and in collaboration with the university of wisconsin. it's a wonderful. they provide the raw material which we then digitize and provide a user-friendly search engine in format and everything and provided back to them. everybody gets the benefit out of this thing and we have gotten this work back to the start of the eisenhower did administration and we actually get to target that a little bit. we have asked them for them at uriel associated with world war i in part the cause there are so

much interest in that reticular in europe. our office is doing a lot of repertory work for embassy over there on the outbreak of the war and america's role in diplomacy and relationship with the governments at that time. >> host: why the university of wisconsin? >> guest: they are the people with the on line, full on line set of the foreign relations series. i don't know when they did it or how or why but it's a wonderful relationship now. >> host: stephen randolph is a historian at the u.s. department of state. thank you.

>> joining us on booktv is kathleen rasmussen the editor of the most recent volume of the foreign relations of the united states, 1977 to 1980, volume three. kathleen rasmussen what was your job? >> guest: my job was to put this bind together in short. my job was to go into the archives, to comb through thousands of pages of documents. archival collections ranging from the department of state to the national security council more general white house office files as well as the papers of the u.s. representative for trade associations and also of course the department of the treasury. so about a year going through these archival collections. thousands and thousands of pages of documents. copying them and scanning them

and bringing them back to the office and i spent a good amount of time going through the transcripts picking out 350 or so of the most important, most represented documents that have told the story. >> foreign economic policy. you concentrate on just the economics? >> guest: indeed and in particular looked at the monetary policies its trade policies as well as its approach with less developed countries. >> host: what did you learn? >> guest: oh god, what did i learn? i learned it's a very interesting volume for me to do because i've done a policy volume at the ford administration's approach to foreign policy which is clearly my specialty. i was interested to see how a lot of stories were finished. the list i started during the early 1970s interesting to see

how it plays out and the differences of approach. i guess i take away some of the big themes and lessons and the themes i discovered during this time. i took away one of the big themes that i took away was how the carter administration dealt with a variety of major challenges that it faced in the global economy. the global economy in the 1970s was very much in a state of flux. the united states for which the generation after world war ii had been declining and challenged by revitalized west germany and japan. less developed countries. [inaudible] the 1973, 1974 oil shock and oil

price hike led to a shifting of financial power from opec and that same oil price help trigger the recession in the middle years of the decade that carter had to grapple with as well. it's just very interesting to see how he was able to succeed or how he was able to approach these challenges to american prosperity. >> host: kathleen rasmussen as the years went by 77, 78 etc. to to see the focus of the economic policies change? >> guest: is certainly did change. for example one of the administration challenges was the trade deficit. we have trade deficits and this is what we have. this is an annual phenomenon or the united states but in fact when carter came to office this was very new. the united states had only

experienced its first trade deficit and 1971. it was a new phenomenon with which the adventures that to grapple and in the nixon ford of administration the u.s. pottered between trade deficits but by the time carter comes into office a trade deficit takes on its more permanent character. initially the administration isn't quite sure what to do about the deficit. they think it's a situation that's a more temporary phenomenon. they think it's the result of not excessive but the high price we are paying for oil as the result of the fact that the united states has recovered relatively better from this recession meaning that we were buying more imports. so the administration initially in 1977 said look this is not a

permanent problem. we don't think there is a fundamental challenge to our markets at home or abroad and what should we do about it? image leave the lessons where we shouldn't really do anything. we don't want to take it seem like the problem. this will work itself out as congress tackles the energy package and other countries start buying more of our stuff. of course it was not troubled him and as 1977 rolls into 1970 the administration begins to see the persistence of the trade deficit is having important implications abroad and particular convincing traders in the national financial markets that perhaps the carter administration is not serious about dealing with this challenge and what you see is you start to see traders dumping dollars.

the dollar starts to decline rapidly. there is a flurry of activity and conversations and meetings and with the u.s. government as well as foreign leaders about what we are going to do about this declining dollar. they try a host of efforts to promote exports to get to increase domestic production of energy to eventually control inflation to do anything they can to restore the confidence of the money markets and the carter administration's ability to handle this crisis of the trade deficit. what i found most interesting about it was as so often happens in foreign economic volumes there is the politics and what was really interesting was that the carter administration officials concluded that if we don't deal with this trade deficit and deal with this declining dollar we are going to

sap the confidence of americans at home but we are also going to to -- there's going to be diminishment of confidence abroad. increasingly our trading partners will question our ability to lead not only on the economic ground but within the broader western alliance. it becomes a crisis of leadership. long before jimmy carter makes his famous speech on the crisis of confidence in the united states american officials are acutely aware that there's this concern that the administration is not acting with enough determination and enough will to tackle these challenges. finally in 1978 buried able to enact a series of measures to control inflation as well as to stimulate production and conservation have energy as well as working with some of our

partners such as west germany switzerland and japan to control the foreign value of the dollar, finally. finally they are able to stop the flurry of memoranda and meetings because finally the dollar stabilizes. there is very much a shift in those first two years. once we get into 1979 towards the end of 1979 of course other matters start too preoccupied the carter administration including the iran hostage crisis and the -- and you can see it volume up paper. it's a physical change almost so if you have this many documents to look at from 1977 and 78 and 79 their attention is just just focus. >> host: do you find contemporaneous books about the carter administration were

accurate, inaccurate? >> guest: there was a sense of carter and think at the time as well as sense has certainly had a reputation for micromanagement and some scholars would suggest that indeed his intelligence combined with his attention to detail meant that sometimes he was a micromanager and indeed you do see that in the documents. the attention that carter gives to the various memoranda and paper submitted for his approval is truly impressive. to the point where he is reading a 20 page memoranda on various issues which he didn't see his predecessors do. if he is reading a 20 page

memoranda on every topic that comes before him that sometimes can be a bit of a problem. the idea of carter is a micromanager is sometimes -- [inaudible] another contemporary judgment, there's a theory among some that the administration engaged in benign neglect of the u.s. dollar. this suggests that particularly in the treasury department they saw the dollar declining and didn't do much to stop it. this of course, a declining dollar, everybody wants a strong dollar that the damage to the weak dollar is that it makes exports cheaper and therefore more desirable and it make's it more expensive for us to buy imports and imprudent -- improve our trade deficit.

sometimes allowing the dollar to float downwards in an effort to improve our trade deficit. my reading of the document suggests i didn't think see anything specifically in benign neglect. i do actually think there was more concern at the time for just dealing with this issue of the dollar. >> host: is this 1977 to 1980 foreign relations available to the mac in public? >> guest: it is indeed available on a web site which is history.state.gov. is not yet available in hard copy. that is one of the neat things

to use a technical term. that is one of the great things about my job. the work that i produce as well as my colleagues produce in this office, the documents that we go out and find them put together and annotate in order to make contacts, these things are available to anybody who has access to the internet and not only people in this country that people abroad. that is one of the great things about this job, and my work in particular is so radically accessible. >> host: have you found -- heard for many previous carter administration officials are from the president's office, any critiques about your work? >> guest: no, not my work in particular. occasionally we have in the past heard from former officials about foreign relations volumes. they have noted certain things

that we have published and they have certainly been -- to us. we published a thing so far i think it's for volumes in the carted administration. to my knowledge we would hear back from that. >> host: you been at the state department since 2002. you state that the economic policy. which president did you begin with? >> guest: i started with the nixon ford administrations of two volumes on foreign economic policy and u.s. relations with western europe during the nixon ford era as well. i cut my teeth on henry kissinger as it weren't also richard nixon and gerald ford and that was a very interesting place to start my career. >> host: kathleen rasmussen are you seeing a trend towards more and more white house influence as a post to other

departments? >> guest: during the 1970s for sure in particular the national security council. it's a time that have been ramping up for some time with richard nixon and henry kissinger. the department of state plays a larger role in my volume in the carter administration than it does in the nixon ford volume and i fully anticipate that in fact other agencies are going to play a larger role than the national security council. in the 1970s of course you have fundamentally three strong national security pfizer's with henry kissinger followed by brent scowcroft and kissinger and brzezinski in particular are very key to make their well-thought-out marked on foreign policy.

>> host: kathleen rasmussen of the state department, thank you for your time. this is book tv on c-span2. >> guest: thank you very much.

[applause] >> thank you for being here. we are going to have a blast. i appreciate your oldness and your courage. especially caring that look under your arm going all wiki. [applause] it is good to be here on this book tour. i appreciate those of you who want to read my words unfiltered it's refreshing for me to get to call it like i see it and not worry about what everybody else is going to say. just get out there and speak the truth. i know that is how you are wired so thank you so much. i want to shake everyone of your hands and thank you so much for being here. [applause]

[chanting] sarah! >> some of the bestsellers from 2009. visit our web site to watch all of the programs we had aired on booktv over the last 15 years. >> i have been trying for i guess the last 20 something years to stop writing books. [laughter] and you know i totally get it that i work with ancestors and i sometimes will feel very free when i finish something. i remember finishing the color per volt 30 years ago and just weeping with joy. i am done. i have had that scenario with myself many times, thinking i am done but anyhow this book i'm going to read from the cushion

in the road. i wanted to read a little bit about how that came about. how did i think of the life that i lead. when i'm not on the road somewhere, it's so quiet and so meditative than soap contemplative. it's so happy with me and my sweetheart who is a musician. one of the ironies of life of course is that i love quiet so much that i fell in love with the person who plays the trumpet [laughter] so you know life is always just telling who do you think is in charge? did you by some dream imagine that you were in charge? i will just show you. this is a very short introduction to this book, the

cushion in the road. i learned much from dow was thought. it's been it comfort to me since i read my first poland which was sitting quietly doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by it self. to me, this is it perfect party. but there is also for that tradition this thought. it wanders home is in the road. it wanders home is in the road. this has proved very true in my own life. much to my surprise because i'm such a homebody. i love ain't home with my plants, animals, sunrises and sunsets, the moon. it is all glorious to me. and so when i turn 60 i was

prepared to bring myself to sit on my cushion in the meditation room i had prepared long ago and never get up. [laughter] it so happened that i was in south korea that year, of course in south korea agreed with me. in that culture it is understood that when we turn 60, when we turn 60 we become a key. perhaps this is not how korean spell it. this means we are free to become once again like a child. we are to rid ourselves of our cares especially those we have collected in the world. and to turn inward to a life that e.'s, of leisure, of joy. i loved hearing this. what an affirmation of the feeling i was already beginning

to have. enough of the world. where is the grandchild? where's the cushion? and so i began to prepare myself to withdraw from the world. there i sat finally on a cushion in mexico with a splendid view of the homemade stone fountain with this softly fallen water in perfect soothing that drove to what i thought would he do next and perhaps final 20 years of my life. unlike my great, great, great grandmother who lived to be 125. i figure it a.d. is doing very well. and then a miracle seemed to be happening. america, america was about to elect or not elect a person of color as its president. what?

mike cushion shifted. then too an unsuspected guest left the radio on and i learned that bombs were falling on the people of bosnia and -- have lost five of her daughters. didn't i have a daughter? what i have wanted to lose her in this way? wasn't i a mother even if reportedly imperfect in that role? well, my cushion began to wobble. i have friends who became a key and managed to stay achy. for me, the years following my 60th birthday seemed to be about teaching me something else and yes i could become like a child again and enjoyed all the pleasures and wonder of child experiences. but i would have to attempt to maintain this joy in the vicissitudes of the actual world

as opposed to the meditative universe with its calming ever flowing fountain. my travels will take me to the celebrations in rushing to d.c. where new president barack obama would be a not very good. they would carry me the morning after those festivities to faraway burma myanmar which would lead to much writing about ang san suu kyi. they would take me to thailand for a lovely trip up the river where i could waive happily and that people would smile back when smiled upon. they would take me to gaza and much writing about the palestine israel impasse. to the west bank, to india, to all kinds of amazing places like for instance had tried in jordan. who knew? i would find myself raising a nation of chickens in between

travels and visits to holy people to oakland would take her and -- my cushion the fountain that piece because of my attention to some of the deepest suffering in the world. sometimes staying far away. i felt torn. a condition i do not like and i do not recommend. and then in a dream came to me. there was a long asphalt highway , like the one that passed by my grandparents place when i lived with them as an eight and 9-year-old. my grandfather and i sat on the porch and the still of georgia heat and count the cars as they by. he would choose the red cars. i would choose lou and black. it was a sitting on cushions of sorts i suppose for the two of us because ours could go by and

we were perfectly content. perhaps that is why in the dream the solution to mike quandary is

.. is just

over an hour. >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. we want to welcome you here to the john f. kennedy hyannis museum. we're very happy to have you here this evening, and we're happy to have c-span with us as well for the author, martin >>