and suffering and often very little benefit that the complications and the harm outweigh any potential benefit. people end up doing worse they are beaten down by the toxicity and less about the psychology but we did a steady. the week you're most likely to have surgery in your life is the last week of life the day is the last day of that week. when we go into surgery we don't know if things will turn out well or not. that is what you're doing with a terminal illness the last-ditch effort we're often sacrificing not just

equality but their chance of survival and more often than not we get a wrong at that very last stage. is a very wake-up call for us in medicine and for patients if you're clinicians are not willing to recognize your priorities then make them understand what your priorities are besides living longer than what you don't want as part of your care. >> host: does longevity run in families? use your patient say there is no infection and my mother and her mother had that. so what if we explore more? >> when i tell people might grandfather died at 100 they

say you are lucky but my grandmother died at 30 from malaria. there is an interesting study of contribution of genetics and longevity is very weak how tall you are 90% is genetic. but we know that from identical twins but the difference of time or links of survival for identical twins is 15 years on average with how long they live. >> host: people have a lot of wisdom later in life that they disclose things to their doctor they would not tell their spouse or put a knife to their skin just because you were the surgeon. what have patients shared

with you about accumulating money or time spent with family? >> in research done by a psychologist and asking people ages 18 to 94 with the steady going on two decades to ask them to record with their emotions are and experiences are into rather spend with your sister or another family member or this movie star? they tended to choose one signature options to achieve a more or getting more to meet more people to love

that possibility of going to allow a bar at 2:00 a.m. in the hopes to yell at one another that you might meet someone new in there is an older signature that there is nothing more than a nightmare i would rather spend my time with my sister. >> can to make sure they have some contributions to the world. the fascination is as people age the thought is the brains are changing to make you more live that way but some of those had a terminal illness especially on the west coast in the early days

of hiv/aids and those patients would shift to have an older signature then she did as steady during an 11 when the world became uncertain and fragile and you were not sure what was happening everybody moved to a signature of a rather be with family and be connected to those i love and make a difference for them. and that was revealing as time goes on when we are unaware of our mortality that we are most of our lives and focus on getting having and achieving to become aware of the limitations because of the uncertainty for any variety of reasons like ebola suddenly we want to focus to

be connected to others and that wisdom is a manifestation of having perspective where we are in life. >> host: patients told me they wish they spent more time with their family but nobody says it wished i spent more time at work. >> catcher kids go to college they said no one to focus on work i am not sure that is a good idea it is perspective when people think they have at least 20 years they be paid if they are mortal that we will see sacrifice time for achievements but that makes no sense when you are more aware. so really is just a matter of perspective and the

wisdom is to know where you are in that place of time. >> great to see you again and congratulations on the book "being mortal" and will afford to continue in that conversation. thank you >> my comments about ebola is we had here in this country doctor's coming back patients sent texas hospitals and nurses and so forth.

people are just reacting to a very serious diseases with teams of doctors and nurses kanye constantly but we also see that the headings over and over. i suppose we should be typed up for them to chop up your head but not ebola that is here. >> sold those people should be stopped from entering the nation and. >> i'd like c-span2 a question is that ebola virus prove we need a national one payer health care system? we saw what happened in texas with capitalistic health care systems and now will cost us millions and

millions to clean that mess up so now to know that we need a national health care system

>>host: what makes you want to write that book? >> i had never been to tomlinson hill. my grandfather would always say we had a slave plantations called tomlinson hill and when the slaves were freed they loved it so much they took tomlinson as their last name. and as a seven or eight year-old kid in dallas going through desegregation in 1973 dallas schools were still segregated and there was a court order for forced busing so race was very much an important topic at that time in dallas. i was aware of that does the child that there were black tomlinson's that my family once held as slaves just

boggled my imagination. and that became an important part of my identity growing up and like southern culture that fought in the civil war as part of that plantation life, that was a big deal. so i would unknowingly brag about it. not knowing that wasn't something to be proud of the not later in life when i become educated and went to africa that i began to realize that the myth that had shaped my life so much no one was examining or questioning. i witnessed lynchings and

things and africa of what i knew about the south. so i decided it is time to examine the myth that my grandfather sold me on so that is when i set out and decided to look for you. >>host: how surprising was it to learn the truce about your ancestors? >>guest: by the time i started on the book i knew there was no truth to my grandfather's story. i was educated enough to know what i would find what is not necessarily pretty.

but that is all i had to go on. just that one statement from my grandfather and old newspaper clippings and obituaries. what i did not know we're the details are what to expect to be involved these are all things the with later discover. so it was kind of expected. i didn't expect to find that oral history as part of works progress where you brag about the first flinching or how the why and

prevented the blacks from voting and pressured and jim crow. so that was really surprising. kelso did not understand the power of the kkk in texas politics or my grandfather was involved with that political movement. and was not surprised to find out they were involved but the details is what was shocking. >> how comfortable were you

learning this about your ancestors? >> i did not make my first trip to tomlinson hill and tell 2007. this is a place that you grew up on there where you spent your childhood. by the time i was 42 or 47. lane standing on the hill led is 17 acres to the confederate veterans association they constructed a reunion grounds and it is still standing today and your family still hold reunions on the hill. there was a sign that says will come to a tomlinson hill and seen that for the first time as an adult was a

sense of pride this is where my ancestors are from. at the same time i was torn into mention these crimes were they would beat or torture people were likely rate people. it was hard to get my head around and this gets to the challenge today of how we can be proud of our heritage and that the same time to recognize the crimes our ancestors committed that is what i tried to get at with the book how to reconcile?

>>host: what made you want to do that? >> i have heard this argument mostly from the white families around tomlinson hill nothing to do with meet one why should i care about what they did? and to meet that is how families like mine denied history to families like yours and how we deny the reality of what it means to be white and black in america. the only way you can understand the true meaning

of that is to understand the history. that is why i thought it would be compelling to tell the story from a white family in the black family with the same name to come from the same place and follow them from slavery through the civil war war, reconstruction up and tell today to compare and contrast this is something your uncle charles really helped me with that he described a sharecropper's elementary school in the 1940's one-room 30 teachers with kids first through eighth grade all in one room with no bathrooms no running water at the same time he

went to that school my father was in dallas texas going to a brand new beautifully built elementary school learning german and violin and was the best of the best you can not understand where our families are today intel you understand that kind of history. >> that is what i think it is important. >>host: you write to embarrassing seven the book about both families. why did you feel that was important? >>guest: i think as a journalist i have revealed the bears seem things about probably thousands of people. i have described the worst

moment the people's lives that they would forget but for everyone to read as long as we have the archives. so for me to not take this hard journalistic look at our families would have been dishonest it was also a important to make this story real no one has a perfect family if they were perfect in the books then it wouldn't be real or accurate or give "the reader" a chance to have a connection. be honest there was a lot of

embarrassing things i discovered better not in the book. i tried to make sure again again, to maintain that parallel at the same time going through the '60s and '70s and cultural changes my family was going through the same thing. that was a way to show how the greater outside forces take our families just the same even though the experience is very different. >>host: very different. so what about the book is applicable to day and in society? >>guest: a couple of things. that the younger generation that grew up with the segregated schools in those

coming of age with a black president there is a gap they are not aware of what our family has been through but it is time to visit that. what i learned as a foreign correspondent was working in south africa with apartheid or rwanda after the genocide or somalia that whenever you have a history of communal violence the only way to move forward is to have a shared understanding of the past. talk about truth and

reconciliation that we have to have a commager's before we can step forward for reconciliation. i don't think we had that in the united states where there is the accepted truth that both sides can agree upon and to build reconciliation. do you feel like we take more texas is true that american history deal think it is balanced? >> not at all. racism is imbalanced we may have elected our first black president but we are still a

long way from being we need to be as a society. and that brings me to my next question for you growing up going to the school that you went to i remember you use two's sings the dixie song. the views still turn out to be the man that you are today? >>guest: during desegregation that we had to struggle with white schools lamp black schools but this curriculum it was northern aggression in it was not about slavery but states' rights and they should be proud of their history in

the south and how noble the cause was. you can teach those things with everyone in the classroom is white and i said in the book we learned the words the battle hymn of the republic that we would sing dixie more often. there is an awkward time suddenly we have a mixed classroom and suddenly you cannot teach history the way you did before. but no one was held responsible like there were no slaveholders. that it just existed in then it didn't and no one is responsible. that is what frustrated meet

singing dixie. but as the symbol of slavery but you're teaching is wrong. there is something wrong here. and this is where i give my father so much credit that he is the one that broke the chain in my family his father was klan and his father was clan and he decided know and i would definitely will not raise my kids this way. i would come home from school tousing dixie he would say that song represents a lot of bad

things and singing it will make black people feel bad. in saying that to a nine year-old that is how he explained it. please don't do that. >>host: you have a story told me about your dad how his mind was changed by going to the record store? >>guest: yes. he played violin in school. he played broadway songs and light classical music and a new enough in the late '50s rock and roll bored him. it is the same three chords so he goes to a record store to not give me all this. show me something that is interesting. i want to hear music in the

record shop owner back then you could listen to the record before you bought it. so he handed him an album and said tried this. the first tune was brown midnight with miles davis. and in my father's words, he had found his home and he sat there and listened to that music and it was the most amazing thing he had never heard any instantly fell in love and was engaged and he sat there staring at the cover and it was a black man miles davis on the cover and he thought to himself there is no way something this beautiful and this amazing could come from someone who is inferior.