they have this amazing curiosity about the world. there's this willingness to follow the threads of interests, not being clear where those threads will take them. in my book i talk about this as

a slow hunch, this idea innovation doesn't often come from lightbulb moments. it comes from getting interested in something without a clear idea why you're interested in it and following that interest for sometimes for decades, and just kind of teasing it out until turns into something that is transformative that can change the world. the version of that in the episode on colds, call history of our mastery of cold and artificial refrigeration and air-conditioning over the last 100 years. one of the weird heroes of that chapter is clarence berzon of birdseye frozen foods who invented the technology of flash freezing almost 100 years ago. is passed to this was a beautiful process where he was a naturalist and a park ranger, at one point we recruited this initial. he goes up, he moved to labrador

with his family. he has a one year old child and decides to move to labrador in 1942 of which is a weird choice but he's up there in the winter and he's having a really hard time just finding nourishment for his family, finding good food. nothing growing. everything is frozen it. they would eat all this awful stuff. one day he goes ice fishing with all local, it is out there -- i went out icefishing and i was incredibly bad at it. because icefishing of the catch decision because it's like 30 below, the fish comes out and instantly freezes. so he takes it back and then i'll sit out today's leader and eats it and he's like, this is really good. this is much better than any other frozen food we got all winter long. really, really tasty and tastes almost completely fresh.

most of us at that point, we would say, great, that was a good new. the fish was tasty. i'm not going to go read my book. whatever. but birdseye was like, why was the fish tasty? what was different about it? he begins this bizarre set of experiments with all these different forms of food, vegetables and meat and fish, we freezes them at different temperatures, different speeds and then falls them out and eats them and does taste tests. again, for no apparent reason. is wife is like, what are you doing, clarence? qaeda that. he begins to realize what's happening is things that are frozen at a very low temperature very quickly are not damaging the cellular structure of the food and vast preserving it better and making it tastier when you thought that. literally another eight years

passed and eventually he starts putting the of the idea of an anti-so process to make frozen food. he ultimately sells this to what becomes general foods and he becomes very wealthy, and all of a sudden our kitchens are filled with refrigerators that are being populated by frozen food with birdseye's name on it. this may seem like a nice story in july, okay, i had frozen he begins as a kid, they really weren't all that great. is this the most important innovation? but like freezing is a technology which is essential to freezing human embryos. there's a whole central part of the ideas and whole world of flexibility over conceiving children that we now enjoy today that is in every row since dependent on her ability to master gold, becomes almost directly out of some of birdseye's research. so in a sense yes the world was

made safer from frozen peas but there millions of people who would not be elected if we have not mastered cold in that way. that's the movement through history that the book and the show tries to do. i hope that, i think about it as, i think about as a parent, i have a 13 year-old, an 11 year-old an eight year old. when the kids were very young i've always said the one thing i wanted for them is that they had that curiosity, that they be obsessive about things, that they get into things which don't think about it. i don't care what it is as long as they're learning that feeling of i have read everything about this topic because that's an incredibly useful mental muscle to have or try to have when you become a grown-up. if you've learned the pleasure of diving into something an tryg to learn you can about whatever

field you're into. i've always wanted that in my children and out in the careful what you wish for category they have that but they are obsessed with luxury yachts which is a total waste of their time. why do we have a yacht like that? i think and i watched a show with him and told them all these stores but it's funny watching the show with him because they really couldn't care less that i'm in a. like i may liability in the show for them. it's so goofy. don't make jokes on camera, dad. it's not funny. you can see them getting pulled in to the narratives, and we've spent a lot of time thinking about the show and think about the book, trying to get that thought where an 11 year-old were really enjoyed the book. it would be hard for an 11 year old to read the book but the show, i think most of the stories in the book will be new to most well read educated even

history buffs are we really tried to find stories that would be surprising to people and not just cannot bring out the old favorites. to an 11 year-old it's all knew on some level. but i hope it's en and inspiring and some of the enthusiasm i found in researching and writing the book, it's like diving in history and all these fascinating characters and the feeling of come on some level of optimism you have in seeing how many problems did get solved when we think about what we have to confront now, this since it's like we do confront, we have problems, energy problems, any quality problems. we haven't figured it all out yet. but wow, we've made a lot of progress in the last 200, 300 years. it came from these people, some of whom were seeking and economic reward for the actions, some of them work.

some of whom were just trying to make drinking water clean. to look at that history and to really think of it almost as a launching pad for the future, i'm going t going to go and setd traversal problems with the same sets of skills and ingenuity and curiosity that these people did. i hope that's one of the messages that gets across and people read the book or see the show. in part were so interested in how many equivalent stories were happening now around the world, the book is kind of a european, american focus to it but there's so many things happening on a global developer level. we created a website called how we get to next, kind of like a news site that companies updating with interesting stories of clever, if we were going to make the stories in 50 years these are the people we would profile. we are continuing the project online. but anyway, i said i was touched

that it was particularly nice to be here in portland, that spirit of innovation, that in africa since has always seemed to be very much alive -- that maverick. it's good for the first events of this book gets to be in this space. i hope you get to check it out and see the show as well. i've never worked so hard on any project so hard in my life, spent four years. we were shooting, and i would write the book at night. i would go back to the hotel room and work on the book at night. but it was truly a labor of love though there was a lot of labor. i've been sitting at the stores for solo so it's so exciting to get to talk about them in public for the first time. i hope you get to check it out, and thanks for coming out tonight. [applause] >> so we've got some time for questions or thoughts.

we just have a microphone so if you can just wait until the boom mike comes over to hover over your head. that would be great. any questions? right up front. >> so i was curious, you know, i was thinking about how you develop, run into these ideas. like i the background in science, like it's awesome. i love running into this stuff. but then, so going from your researching all these different concepts together, like one thing i'm wondering about is do you ever feel like you are in over your head in terms of these things lex and then also, you do, you are doing an and interpretation of these concepts and also going to film, like they love to sensationalize things. it's like interpreting twice or something sort of. >> great question. the quick answer to do you ever

feel over your head is yes, all the time it. because on two levels. on the one level with all the signs are not technically assigned -- my parents are like we saw your high school biology grades. but also because for whatever reason i this appetite to write about lots of different topics. this book, they're all kind of compressed into one book. i've written about cholera, computers, 18th century i'm always in a position of kind of outsider coming in to give where there's a lot of expertise. it's often a great gift. it's one of the things i love most about much up as i get to talk to these brilliant people and type in these worlds and they get a graduate degree in each of these fields every time i write a new book. but you spend a lot of time thinking about the translation process. part of it is that when i first

kind of dive into the field, i'm almost my own reader. i'm looking at it with fresh eyes and thinking about that's really interesting. board i don't understand that, so probably the reader is not going to understand someone to figure that out site can explain it to the reader. one of things you often find, particularly to go talk to scientists who are at the top of the field is that they will go off about the work and passing they will mention one thing and you will be like that's the most interesting thing about your work. and it's some part of their field that they reached scientific consensus on five years ago. so they don't care about it. they are moving onto the next thing i don't hazard about that thing that although scientists agreed on five years ago. that's the great -- so you'll take that nugget out and turn it into the center of the story. you think about that a lot. in terms of, this is the first

time as i said i've kind of developed a show and a book in parallel and wrote something about this on the website how we get to the next, i wrote about this, that goes into more detail but what i found is that television wants to have people. television want to gravitate around characters. and i realize looking back on my work that for the most part i have kind of lead with ideas, and the people were secondary anyway. i noticed this as a writer when i struggle, whenever i'm writing an ahistorical mode and i feel the need to describe so, for instance, like physically what they look like, it's like okay, i've got to figure, they were tall. why does anybody care about this? let's get on to the ideas. which is what i would be a terrible novels. if i wrote the novel, he walked

in the room. he had a nose. that's what my novel would be like. so with the show working with this, bring a team of producers and directors who wer are so got this stuff and they're always pushing me like we've got to anchor in people's we want to birdseye's and the scots, the french inventor and we want to see them and that they're kind of narrative art so we can then rest the ideas on top of that. and so i think it actually worked out really well because it makes the show in the book, i mean, i'm a little biased but i think you could watch a show and read the book and not feel like it was redundant. because the book is able to get into the broader theory of history. the whole hummingbird affect thing isn't even mentioned in the show. we show lots of examples but we don't use that phrase. we don't good into that theory about how change happens. the book and go into that in more detail in the show is lamar anchored with people.

i spent a lot time trying to get what does the book do really well, and what does the television series to really well and let's make sure they're doing their strength and cannot doing their weaknesses. >> there's kind of a revolution going on in the evening and maybe engineers and innovators. a big guy in a national academy of engineering and his statement was, engineers should be taught about what they're doing is a natural extension of biological evolution, which is is a biological evolution is an engineering enterprise. >> you were to ask me a really easy question, i see. it is a very interesting thing, and whenever one uses, and i'm

guilty, if guilty is the right word for it, whenever one uses evolutionary terms to describe human cultural activity, there's certain resistance to that. and part of the resistance is i think pretty easy to get around, which is to say yes, evolution does not default to conscious choice, right? evolution is going through this process of random variation and selection, but a process of evolution is constantly stumbling across independently, very similar solutions to problems that exist in the world. a classic stories like the eye independent the balls, very similar structures, multiple times all around the planet. because there's just only a certain number of ways that you

can build and i. over enough time given enough time, given i enough variation u hit on those same strategy. there's endless examples of this. that same process happens a slightly different way with human beings and human culture. that's was talking about before with the lightbulb, simultaneous discovery, simultaneous invention were all the sudden at a certain point in time a certain thought or technology or scientific breakthrough becomes imaginable at a certain point in time. all of a sudden it in five or 10 or 20 people will simultaneously discover this phenomena without talking to each other. there's hundreds of exhibits of his. it seems almost mystical. but what is is with this network of ideas come together. 20 people were inventing the electric light bulb between 1816-1880. no one was invented the electric lightbulb in 1760 because you didn't understand enough about

electricity, he didn't understand enough about vacuums. he didn't understand all the stuff that had to come together. it's a roundabout way of saying when you look at change in an evolutionary way, when you think about engineers building a certain building and you compare it to a snail engineering a shell or something like that, you can look at and say that evolutionary strategy evolves without a conscious mind kind of thinking it here that's not the way works in human culture. but at the same time, the simultaneous discovery phenomena is quite similar because it's enabling the thought, this constellation of ideas that's floating around. it's not individual people. it is they are being fought by this particular moment of time. so it's a very rich, there's a whole book to be written on that and maybe i will do it one of these days. right up front.

[inaudible] what do you think, are the nontraditional things you can think of that would still have that innovation in the classroom? >> we are hopeful the use a lot of the material. pbs has a big education push for this i hope it will be in classrooms, sometimes as simple as showing the videos because i think the stories are exciting. i wrote about this little bit. i m. really obsessed with the idea of simulations, and there's a whole world of interesting new stuff happening now using things like mind craft, and called it a game is totally wrong. it's like an alternate universe that has been built collectively by all these people. my kids live in mind craft world and they didn't go this is what to do for fun.

they did in this shared and private. they just build things. it would be this crazy thing where someone will be in tears because somebody burned down their forests, or whatever it is. this is a problem my parents didn't have. my one son was unleashing sheep everywhere. so younger boy would build this castle and my other boy figured out a way to fill the castle and tied it would -- entirely with she. he filled my counsel with sheep. i seriously have no idea what to tell you. but think about in terms of history. if you take simulations where if you taught the revolutionary war where, it doesn't replace

everything with simulation but if you taught where simulation was kind of the centerpiece of the class and then you are reading on side, listening to lectures, visiting places or whatever but you are simulating what the political tension, the economic tensions, people were doing role-playing in a very complex type historic assemblage which you could do. the kids would run to school every day. they would have this inner understanding of what was really happening, that this was, we have this problem we couldn't get enough energy to make gunpowder and that was a problem with the military that we need to get that gunpowder from friends and sadly the turn of the were changed and all this stuff. every now and then the americans lose. if you're totally open-ended sometimes you to go back and say we did win. here are the facts, what happened, but you can have

experiential relationship to that. i don't know if that's encouraging innovation but it's an innovative way of thinking about making the educational experience more electric. all the way in the back. >> given what you said about the role that unintended consequences play in making innovations possible, how would you architect were put together from a policy perspective, you know, innovation to happen? how would you engineer in a way that we could be more predictable with our innovation? >> you guy guys are really givie the good questions, aren't you? go ahead. >> second part. how it happens in history, issue were sort of debunking that, or

do you still think these happen simultaneously? >> second question first. i think there are individuals in the world historic stage that make a difference, and that, in the same way like if you could take glass out of -- everything would change. if you take jefferson out of the last 300 jews, things would be different. subtly different but he was influential. he was a very interesting figure. i think it's just about getting the balance right. it's about saying we would probably skew come in part because the same reason television wants from your question, television wants characters. we are human beings. we intuitively map the world in terms of other human beings so we look back over five years of history, the unit of measure that we naturally gravitate

towards his people and their stories and their narrative art. the problem is that that's only part of the store. he has to be able to tell -- i call this the long zoom approach. the physical properties, silicon dioxide that make up glass, the way it allows like to transfer through it, the ability to meld it which was important because you can't do anything interesting and they get high temperatures. those physical properties were crucial to the last 1000 years. we shouldn't tell the story without talk about the physical properties. at the same time the individuals who came up with those innovations with glass, can find an 800 years ago and those individuals are interesting. the same time the community of venice and the island with a glass makers were and the social history of have that i can about is interesting. the larger system of europe when those lenses when that answer circulating, that's also part of that story.

so to tell the truth of what happened, you have to start with adams and make it all went to the map of europe. and forget way to go back and forth between them. i find that amazing and that work as a writer, as a historian come as a reader when i get taken on that journey, that to me is weirdly more interesting i think an individual arc of someone's life. idthat if you can figure out a y as i've tried to do to do both, then you're in a sweet spot. engineering, there are two sides to it. in society, you want to leave room for unplanned connection. like serendipity is a huge driver of progress, right? stumble across some nails and you put together. that's why i think that we have been, we are heavy on intellectual property restrictions, pancit things like

that right now in society and we need to move back on. leading ideas flow and collide with other ideas and let people build on other people's ideas, can drive innovation as much as the protections and proprietary nature of patents. i'm not saying do away with patents but think the balance is off. it is also true that the unintended consequences are often where the problems are. like the story of progress is pretreat for. generally when someone sets out to solve a problem, eventually they do in the solution is better than what came before. there are very few cases in society where we selected an inferior technology. like betamax-vhs or. search for common terms of video quality for commentated reasons we chose the worst technology. but that doesn't happen very often, and when does you almost always have dvds 10 years

later which is better than both. the local march of progress tens, things get better in that way. the problem is the hummingbird that. there's a whole big rift in the book about the conditioning. air-conditioning gets invented with this local objective of initially it was industrial technology and then they put in moviinthe movie there's for thet of which they summer blockbuster possible. the big thing is it becomes a home technology right after world war ii. it triggers a single because migration in the united states history would've been to the sun belt, moved to florida, that doesn't states to places that were basically uninhabitable you're sorry, if you're from scottsdale but the truth is it's really hot in there and if you don't have air-conditioning nobody wants to live there.

that then rewrites the political map of the united states because there's a huge swing in the electoral college from the north to the south which is part of story about ronald reagan gets elected in 1980 but also then creates these desert states that have huge populations and while locally it's all the problems of how to keep people gold in a hot department, the hummingbird effect is you've got to get these people water and that is hard to do and there is made not to be enough water to support 10 million people living in the desert. so that's what it's really important to keep our eye on these lateral consequences because that's often where the downside of the march of progress comes from. creates a new problem that has be solved with a new set of technologies and that's a we have solely ratchet our way forward. i think we have time for one more question. all the way over there. >> i was wondering regarding

your wish that your children be passionate about their curiosity, given that you have studied so much enthusiasm about the development of culture and history. did you from the things he studied the to get any conscious plan to help support the, or did you specific study ways to help them develop that way? >> now you're making me feel bad about my parenting. i've been so busy make a show and the book for you people. i have no time for my kids. no. it's funny, about this book called mind wide open, and it was all about the neuroscience of everyday life, and i was kind of a guinea pig so went and did all these experiments on my brain. i took a couple of mri exams recreationally. most people don't do

recreational mris. it was all about what could science teacher by yourself as an individual the way going to therapy? what you got a brain scan? not have the brain works but who you were. i had very young kids at the point. i had a two-year old and when i was finishing it i had my second what the my wife had this rule like no experiments on the children. i probably haven't been as good about it as i should be, given how interested i am but what i found and now that they're older, is that part of what you have to do is to figure out okay, they're going to be into things that them little suspicious of because they are not my of session, like the luxury yachts. so the way to do with it is not like i was into these other things. you should be into dice baseball

games like i was in 1977, whatever it is. rather, take their thing and stick them towards thinking about it in a richer way or adding new skills. one of my sons has gotten into this bizarre habit of building up accounts in various kind of kid social media kind of forums and then selling them for small dollar amounts to is that a bunch of followers and the thousands of rebels and he makes $10 on a currency is a lot itunes gift card. my wife is like what is going on? unlike, he's a little awkward or. he's doing this arbitrage between these different accounts. so okay, we will set up a spreadsheet and every time you buy an account for something to your register and put it in here and we'll keep track of what's going on and you can see like are you making money over time at this or are you losing money and if you're losing money that's fine that you should know

what. i ended up going to this process, teaching him about a profit and loss kind of works and all these things most 12 year olds aren't thinking about yet. now we have made over 10 million -- no. i think he's still losing money. i think as a. you have to just come here kids always going to steer you into new things to get into that you're not always going to approve of so you are writing about their driving a little bit. what you have to do is kind of be like he had taken here, let me show you some things along the way that will make it even more interesting, rather than saying i want to drive the boat over there, because they won't do that. that's my parenting advice to you. thank you, guys so much. always so great to be here. i really appreciate it. hope you stop and get the book. [applause]

>> every weekend, booktv brings you 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2. keep watching for more television for serious readers. >> in "the invisible front," yochi dreazen talks about two brothers who died while serving with the u.s. army, one by a roadside bomb in iraq and the other by suicide. he compares the reaction of the army to the two deaths and discusses the efforts made by the brothers parents to bring awareness to ptsd and military suicides. during this event hosted by the center for a new american security, he is in conversation with major garrett of cbs news.

>> good evening, everybody. good evening. welcome and thank you for joining us this evening. my name is richard fontaine. i'm the president of the center for a new american security. it's a real pleasure to welcome all of you here to celebrate the publication of yochi dreazen's new book, "the invisible front: love and loss in an era of endless war." yochi dreazen as many of you know is simply one of the best national security journalists in america today. he's a managing editor foreign policy county spent nearly four years on the ground in afghanistan and iraq reporting and spent most of his in bed in frontline combat units. before that a longtime reporter for "the wall street journal" and desert as a contributing editor to the atlantic and easy national city correspondent for the "national journal." but above and beyond all of these a lustrous journalism accomplishments, yochi's

readers, which have included most of us in this room, discerned in his writings a deeply human touch and a full appreciation of wars cost during and after the battle. the recognition of this is received the military reporters and editors association top award for domestic military boarding for the 2010 serves on military suicides and the psychological traumas impacting veterans of iraq and afghanistan. we are privileged to be wrote his book while he was writer in residence at the center, and during his year with us we discovered that not only is he a world-class author but also a wonderful colleague and friend. deep insight into human side of the was widely important into all of the thinking that we did on our own projects and writing, and fully animates the book that we here tonight to celebrate. in "the invisible front" he tells the story of the grants,

the couple suffer the loss of two sons, one to combat unwanted suicide. and agreed they turn towards service of their own and help lead a drive and embrace the cost to become far larger than any individual or family. yochi tells this with a characteristic grace and it's a book that deserves to be very widely read and appreciated. if i convinced you of that latter fact, you will be pleased to note that books are for sale and you can purchase in after the conversation on stage, and yochi will be available to sign your copy. we are going to start the proceedings this evening with yochi giving us a brief sorts of nonsense and overdue of the book and then go into conversation from there and then open it up to the audience for questions. but it's my special privilege and pleasure to introduce yochi dreazen.

[applause] >> thank you all for coming. before i start i want to thank richard, some people in the back of the room come a lot of people who made me feel welcome when i was trying to wrestle up any food beyond granola bars that were haphazardly sprinkled throughout the office. i'm very grateful and i look forward to talking into your thoughts and questions. mark and carol graham is at the center of this book, had for longtime a norman rockwell painting. they had three children who are all extraordinarily close. kevin was the middle child and sensitive, the perfect one when his parents what they do something, he would do it without hesitation, without thinking. jeff, his older brother was for rambunctious one. he drank. he was with was the life of the

party. kevin would fall into the party and sit by himself in the corner. then melanie was the young sister, the one they tried to look out for brevity what in the world. the three of them were a single you know, the three them against the world because like many military families, they moved from base to base, from country to country. for the two boys their picture in every sense of the phrase. they looked at the father, watched him ascend from his early start in kentucky to be captain in germany to moving on to korea to moving and doing some tours in saudi arabia and kuwait. for them this was the highest honor, the highest in the public service. and both wanted to do the same thing. they went to university of kentucky. they went through the rotc program, each one plan to be an officer. jeff wanted to lead men into combat. kevin wanted to be a doctor, help others. flash forward a few years. jeff is outcome of the older the

do, he's commission, getting rid to go to iraq. his brother kevin about to enter the final summer before he would be commission and also into the army. what no one in the community because kevin allison smart, funny, just the sweetest of the family was there was a darkness inside of him, that he was trying very hard to control and feeling. he was diagnosed with depression, clinical depression and put on medication which brought his mood down. but that summer he thought of the into the military and to discover i'm on this medication they will kick me out. mike reed will be done before it starts so i can't take it. he stopped taking it. that decision sent him spiraling. after his death his family found a to-do list he left for himself, moche was do laundry, pick up food. the last item was taken after getting things done that too much liquor he and jeff always played golf. they were supposed to be one morning to play one of the last

round before jeff left to do is last bit of training and onto iraq. kevin didn't show a. jeff was wondering and looking at his watch and a cell phone, his brother wasn't there. they call the apartment, called his sister and said have you seen kevin? she had not. she knocked on his door and to do anything but she opened the door and saw him any. he hung himself from a ceiling fan. at first she thought it was a pretty. she thought her brothers were tried to pull it over like that in the past but then the horse and then she realized it was a. that sent her the spiraling. mark thought i can't serve in the army more. carol thought i'm inevitably anymore. she was so subtle. they pulled through but just barely. to you later jeff was leading his men on a bridge to clear bridge in fallujah. it was a part that i spent and at that moment was one of the bloodiest most dangerous parts of the most passionate entire country. jeff was walking ahead of his

walking ahead of his men and is also the glimmering on the bridge and the to do what it was but something to instead it's not good. so we turned to the men behind it and sent stay back. as he turned, the bomb blew up. it was an ied buried on the bridge. he died. his men didn't. now the family has lost two sons. they find out on his last mission when he left the base can jeff had on them in his wallet his brother's driver's license. they were so close in life, lives there still close in death. that's how they try to pull through it. now mark and carol faced this question that anybody in the room with children, has been wondering, if you has one child, how do you pull through? if you lose to, how do you get out of bed and had to find anything can fill that void? at first they thought they couldn't to they thought this was the in for both of them. for more, the military is done. he thought only i prevented jeff from going from iraq he would stipulate. if only i said to kevin you

don't need to do this. he would still be alive. they decided there was still the way to go. carol set to mark one night, this is either a chapter in our lives for this is the book. they decided it would be a chapter. mark came back. he has more promise, more power. what he sees around him and what we all know to be true tragically is this way the people coming back with ptsd, with ones you can't see. coming back who are beginning to take on lives and this is a great is rising and rising and rising. first in 2008 hits and goes past the ceiling rate. in 2010 the difference continues to grow. on and on to where we know our. more people kill themselves every year than the year that preceded them. this year so far it's about 350 people. many serving in the army national guard and army reserve. mark came back. this is what he was discovering. he found it wasn't just as

clinical antiseptic term state in which is a real issue. the accurate face. but there something in the culture of the army he saw in the culture of the base or he was commando, fort carson but have a callousness to. and will particular case at fort carson in the brigade headquarters, someone hung up a sheet this am going to see a psychologist because i'm a coward, i'm soft and all of the above. this wasn't there for a few hours. this was there for days. in another case of someone wrote a suicide note on the wall. thankfully they got help before it's too late but the army court-martial him for defacing army property. this is what mark was finding. this was the statement. the suicide numbers were taking up higher and higher. so he's confronted now at fort carson with the base of the highest suicide base. he's a person understands what any officer in military what it is to lose someone to some and

you can see. what is to loosen her you love when you didn't know they need help until it was too late to give it to them. he knows that for many of these young soldiers and for the spouses and their kids that's exactly what they're struggling with, that exact same question. mark decided to do what he can to change. the policy put in place are ones that are ultimately replicated across the army. one in which they are so off you sounded even now i wonder how they were not done sooner but the truth is they work. one was a hotline where if you called it, the call went to his personal assistant and demonstrate to them. it wasn't something where you call and the call about them the call about them and by the time it got to someone who could help it was truly. it was a direct line to be. that's now been replicated where a call goes into a better, more defined system. it seems like there should be obvious but it was an. at fort awesome the local health facility and the hospital were in the same building. one floor, one a different

floor. if you were a soldier brave enough to risk being mocked for seeking help, brave enough that you're willing to accept your career might literally and if someone saw you seeking help, if you're willing to do all of it, if you without breakage walked into the elevator, you knew that it any moment someone else would see you hit six and they would know you were going there. something you felt might need to be a sequel was no longer a secret. market move moved into two difft facility. another one and one that is located across the army like most things, that's a horrible acronym which won't be about, embedded behavioral health team but the basic idea was rather than a psychologist might be a stranger or a therapist where soldiers come back and so they've never seen before says to me how you feel. the soldier is think, who the hell are you? how can you possibly know who i am? they clam up. the id instead was have a single

therapist assigned to a single brigade. from the beginning before they deployed, while they're deployed, when they come back. this be someone that brigade has seen and it's gotten to know and is gotten to know them. the idea this would not be a stranger or someone with a brigade or the soldier or the officer would say, who the hell are you? this is someone they knew. that worked and it worked tremendously tremendous we will. mark had an ally that he did not expect at fort carson. i mentioned this story because this next because it gives you a sense of some of the people are pushing against what he was doing and some people who are pushing for it. people who were pushing against were saying people who have ptsd, depression, their week. some of the trying to get out of the military service. they don't deserve to wear the uniform. why are you trying to coddle them? then you have people who are battle hardened, toughest of the

tough, they people you would think would definitely not be the people who would agree that these wounds were real i would agree with changes about how you treat them. one of them was a man, a colonel, now brigadier general, a very well-deserved promotion, who was the toughest of the tough. he did multiple tours in afghanistan. this is a man who had led many combats. he had been a lieutenant colonel, then a colonel. for him it was also personal but for a different reason. in afghanistan, a soldier who is unusually gentle and thoughtful, just someone who didn't always belong, that wasn't the place for that he was in the military. he was in afghanistan and he killed himself. the question he faced with what do you do? how do you memorialize someone who killed himself? do you treat them the same you would treat a person who died in combat? you put them on the same the more your wall? do you put them into a church?

what do you do? d. give them full military honors? what did you? his name said, this man does not deserve the same kind of honor. and he said, he sure does. he was with us fighting here. he died because of what he saw and what he did. no different. he's a casualty of war so we will give them the same memorial. they did. randy george became an ally. by the time mark left, the suicide rate at fort carson have plummeted. it'd been the highest when he got there, now one of the lowest in the. i do want to suggest there's a happy ending to this. or carson suicide rate is still high. the army suicide rate is still

high. the military now accepts there's a suicide problem that it did not except in the past but it does not. there's tremendous amount of money being spent, hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars. the military that exist today did not exist in. there's no silver bullet. this is not an epidemic that's been care. this is not something that was the best of intentions, the best strong stable in the military have been able to fix. let me go back to mark into. mark and joe find purpose. the pain of what they were experiencing never went away. i've known them for five years. they work with me on the boat. they are family and they feel like family to them. i've seen them talk about their sons. i've seen them do it 10, 15 times. every time they do it, a decade later since kevin's death, almost a decade since -- there

is no closure for people of lost two children. that pain never leaves them. they talk to a crowd of people, they look out who they don't know, they think maybe one person in the crowd is struggling. maybe one person thinks i'm week. made one person thinks if i get help, i'm flawed. if one person in the crowd is hovering right on the line between getting help when they need it, surviving, not getting help when you need, not surviving. they think it's that one person reacts to fully, if that one person gets up, if that one person says to a friend, close friend, you need help. if that person does it, think it's worth for them we live in the pain. i will close with this and take as many questions if there's time to ask. for them this is an 11 year fight it's still going. they have found happiness, a way of living, a way of finding a meaning and purpose. their daughter was also close friends will be here this sunday

running the 10 miles. she will have kevin say someone said, jeff's face on the other. when you meet her you would not know this was a girl who was the tragedy of burying her brothers. she found happiness. chicago. occasionally she feels guilty. she wonders to i deserve to feel happy? is something wrong with me? she's found happiness, always getting through life and fittingly she is a nurse. she's trying to do what kevin wanted to do. she signed up other people. so i leave you with that. it's easy for us as a country to take we support the troops. it's easy to applaud and it's easy to put something on the back of a car and that's a wonderful. that's what good is it was. there's nothing wrong with that. but soldiers who come back, they are not simply people you applaud. these are real people. these are people who are drawn from our society, who reflect our society and we reflect been.

when cars are great, -- in 2010, suicide took more lives than car crashes. as with the army, the suicide victim the differences getting bigger and bigger. for a long time innocently world suicide was something high school kids did. high school kids were bullied. they killed themselves. college kids were stressed they failed their parents. they killed themselves. that's when have to really worry about suicide with those age groups. now the biggest rise is men in the '50s and '60s. is a man who didn't serve. in many cases these are men who lost their job configured i may never get another job. i can't live like this so i choose to not live. that's where the rate is now rising. so i leave you with that.

the military, the market gaza, the reflection but it's not as if we can stand back and say it's been. it's not we can say it's not us. it is. there are people in this room who are serving now or served in the past. they know this all too well. there's a disconnect that does not need to be there and an issue like mental health, suicide is dangerous for to be there. i close with saying for mark and carol, 11 years on, they are doing what they can to bridge. i hope in our wake people who read the book, my ultimate the book with the also help them the best i can but i thank you all for your time and i look forward to taking your questions. [applause] >> i think we can all see just how vital the issues are and how

insightful the work that yochi is done in his book. now to dig into the conversation portion of the evening with major garrett with us, who is probably well known to many of you as the chief white house correspondent for cbs news and also a correspondent for "national journal." major, over to you. >> i want to apologize to them. the d.c. traffic was different but is no way a commentary on yochi's work or extorting nature of this book. i just want to say this book is personal on a couple of those because you talk about the transracial member of the army after vietnam. my cousin who just i two weeks ago a parkinson's disease was also one of those who served in vietnam and decided to stay. to be part of a junior officer corps that changed the army for the better after vietnam. he did not go through these issues but he is a brother of

all those who decided to stick it out and make the army a better place after vietnam. so in that way, i have two dear friends whose children committed suicide in college as civilians. but also resonates with me, and if you read this book, he read a book about tragic but also transformation. that's worse would want to begin. at the white house the president now signs letters in the same way he did to some who died in combat, someone who's committed suicide. that was the transmission within the building itself. should the president do the same thing? should these be on equal levels? the transformation is working itself to gradually. there was something beneficial about me not being here first because you from the author himself and he can deal with a more articulate than i can but i want to start with which ended with. this isn't a happy ending. this is the beginning of a process that will carry on for a long time. where would you say we, army

culture, military culture, society are into with this, comprehending it? how long do you think it will be before any of us can say a corner has been turned? >> i think we're at a point now where it's understood and accepted. which is wonderful and it sounds like it's a low bar but it's not. for a long time to was pushed back. fofor a long time the pushback suicide epidemic even existed. that's going. there's a deep acceptance, a dvd to push tried to solve a. that's great and that's a massive improvement. the stigma is still there. soldier still feels good must be detail. it's understood them as an effort to fix it but is not yet fixed. one reason for is the army is the definition in of hierarchy. we think of it can we think of the army. over the course of writing the book i spoke to generals i got to know in iraq and against the and asked about their own expenses and many describe

lowest textbook ptsd. they said the wise did recognize him. their kids did recognize him. they had nightmares, all the things you understand ptsd. that is ptsd. these are men at the pinnacle of their corporate i asked them, can use your name? with one exception the answer was no. so until that changes, into the people at the very top, you can get through this, you can have a career, you can have a family, you can have a life is healthy and full. until that changes this issue will not change. >> i want to talk about that. former chairman of joint chiefs of staff is a quote in your in order to make strides, leadership must support and acknowledged her own pts while setting the example by physically seeking help. that's what he told you. talk about the terminology. some people on twitter as is promoting this event said why don't we drop the d. called post-traumatic stress and not add to the stigma all of these validate part of the

stigma by calling it a disorder. is that a conversation you had in researching and developing the book? >> it is and it's a fair question. it's a question and its talked a lot about inside and outside military. if you call it a disorder are using there's an illness, that a person is sick, they are broken? the people who care about the issue but believe when you say it's a disorder a person will not seek help because they fear that as i'm broken, i can't be fixed, why should i can forward? at the high ranks of the army, general odierno, the crew chief of staff, general dempsey, when mike mullen was running the joint chiefs and bob gates was chairman, second offense, all of them felt like the phrase should be post-traumatic stress. bob gates is not a man prone to be overly emotional.

i asked him about his own experience and what he thought of it, when you think of what he had done. what he said to me and it stuck with a sense was, he felt by the time h i left the post-traumatic stress of some sort. going to cemeteries, writing letters, thousands. he felt that changed and felt that changed in the building immediately the white house because whenever he was asked house because whenever he was asked a question about any issue, the englis affecting asiy of all who thought it was the soldiers who have come back missing limbs. the soldiers who come back with a burned. he couldn't give advice to the president about anything at high level because all he got was the human cost. the phrase he used with post-traumatic stress. >> we will take questions as we move along. we can do that at any moment, so why don't we just do that and go to questions. i see your hand up. go right ahead, please. >> i just spent the last five years at the walter reed army

medical center taking care of soldiers coming home. and you listen to the nightmares. you listen to their crying and the tears and hopes and their dreams. we can talk about this until the cows come home. i'm sorry, i'm from new england. the problem that i see, and they don't know if you have any insight on this, is that middle management across the ranks needs to be held accountable, when the court-martial a soldier for writing a suicide note on the wall. i can't tell you how many times soldiers have told me, i asked my colonel to send me to the chaplain, our send me to a psychiatrist. and he swore at me. i can't repeat what the soldiers tell me because -- but anyway, this happens more than once a

day. and it happened four years. the whole five years i was there, i can't even imagine after leaving their three years ago and still hearing these stories. is the army or the military in general doing anything across the board to hold the supervisors and the colonels or whatever ranks the supervisor is, accountable? ..

thursday's suicide had taken place in a given unit, the commander had to give an explanation of what happened. but that is not what we are talking about. that is a high level. this will come in with the system of accountability. if you are a colonel are a kernel, you discover 50 people in your unit arrested for drinking and driving or other serious things like that, you probably get promoted. but right now if they discover three people in your unit killed themselves or were asking for help and turned away you don't have the same punishment. i don't think this goes away. there was a moment illustrated this example about eight months ago when the joint chiefs of staff were summoned to the hill

to talk about sexual assault. claire mccaskill was pushing for it along with a different senator, gillibrand about sexual assault. he only plays for ptsd as seen at a rate comparable to combat. it doesn't matter gender. you are likely to develop ptsd is exactly the same as a soldier. if you remember the hearing, there were some tears or you have these intimidating man and the question was, can you point to anyone that you relieved of command because of sexual assault in their hearing it in the answer was no. the air force answer was no and ultimately two people said yes, coast guard and coast guard and general energy owner, but bowa said. so you have a culture where these tragedies are happening, this horrific crime where you see suicides among female soldiers which have been unheard-of. mainly female soldiers for the

ends of soul, but i agree with you they should be and until they are, this won't change. >> one other thing you brought out of the boat is soldiers or marines who feel if they raise their hand they are canceling out their opportunity to be promoted. they are afraid to say anything because their career might eat your braille and hostile careers are railed. >> to take one example, the air force if you are a pilot, especially female pilots because the situation and if you are a tad and you suffer ptsd come he can't fly. that is taken away from you as a proxy. so ultimately victimized the person twice. so there is crime committed against them and then they want to trade their whole life.

so there are cases where a person is punished in a way for judith or 3 cents b. at the end result is the person feels twice victimized. the stigma remains real for a good reason, which is your career could end. so it is not this wholly irrational fear. it is in some ways very rational which makes it even more heartbreaking. today there's a chance your career but your career will end saturday paper talk about stigma. we don't talk about the past. >> next question. >> hi, i am with an incredibly distinguished group of people including jackie garrick on the head of the dod suicide prevention office. congratulations first on your poke. i wanted to kind of emphasize one of the points you made.

in the military, it is incredibly hard for anybody to come forward for treatment. basically, nobody will come and seek treatment unless they party that identified as going out the door and that is where they will get there. this is a problem that does not have an easy solution. but again, just something to recognize that no matter all the platitudes we have about reducing stigma, the reality is if you want a career in the military, you don't want to be seen as going to get how. the recent rand root port that just came out said that again, servicemembers will go to seek treatment. >> this will take a generation of those who are promoted to the ranks who have a different concept from the early surveys in this particular space within

our military. that generational transformation will ultimately be. they will have grown up in a culture and have come to different conclusions than those above the rank right now. >> i hope so. i really do hope so. >> that is the only thing that is ultimately going to be the way that transforms or do you think it can happen before them? a generation away could be 10 to 20 years. >> i think it could shift before that. the age issue does matter. if you corrupt today, you see commercials all the time for zoloft common sandbox, is part of the culture, something people discuss openly. there's a difference where this is openly discussed. we will see it differently. one thing interesting in the book and talk to people about the boat is almost everyone i talk to says that some point in the conversation i know somebody who killed themselves. i know somebody who sought help.

i know somebody in my family. my wife, husband, child. they remind me of what alcoholism was for every family had someone alcoholic and nobody felt comfortable talking about it. almost everyone i've spoken to in this is true, everyone knows someone for who this has been an issue, but it's still right below the surface, one notch away, but not quite there. idea back >> the department of mental health, johns hopkins university school of public health. for many years, military regulations have prohibited the continued retaining a deployment of mental health disorders and soldiers on psychotropic

medications. and for good reasons because we have soldiers existing mental health disorders exposed to trauma are much higher risk of chronic morbidity as a result of this. for many years the u.s. military turned a blind eye to the deployments, two soldiers with diagnosed mental disorders on multiple psychotropic drugs deployed with conditions that ordinarily would have made them non-deployable and i think we can all recognize the reason for this was that we could not have meant our manpower requirements without this. what does the current epidemic of mental disorders in the military and this practice say about the sustainability of the all volunteer force? >> when it comes to the baseline question of one, will the military function to be of effect is in the u.s. indirectly, or should we go back

to the draft quite should mean suddenly spread the burden so it's not the same 1% deploying again and again and again. the question asked by kim richie where you have a shrinking military, unfortunately the problem gets worse because people are competing for jobs. if i know that guy is a little off and that guy is not, i'm taking the one who's not off. the military sustainable. this is a bigger strain than the things we normally think of. a person comes back missing a limb. but several fake. -- horrific. but we know how to treat that person. we someone with a k., we can guess what happens. when the person comes back and it's not there any doubt now that is the case, we don't know how to process data. we have a friend that has come back. he had a very serious issue and

he looked fine. nothing about how he carried himself, his demeanor, a muscular, low-key guy. he had a therapy dog walking to the altered people say get your dog out of fear. you're fine. you're not blind. how can you have a service dog? he had crippling ptsd to the point he almost died, but because nobody could see it, nobody treated him the way you treat someone who's missing a win. sustainable? yes. but that issue, by way of not being able to understand or have the level of compassion you would, that is a serious issue and i don't know-how that changes in how long it takes for that change. >> at the large the question. it is sustainably optimal. it seems inherent in the book is an underlying conclusion that multiple deployments by their very nature increase the likelihood is very prom night.

if you have a shrinking pores, you're going to have multiple deployments. each and every deployment i don't know mathematically, but exponentially would increase the likelihood of the psychological traumas. is it optimal exit may be sustainable, but from a military perspective is adoptable quick >> it's not. it is known the likelihood of something happening does go up. but the traumas can build. if you hear an explosion, that doubles. if you're not seeing a body in front of you. ptsd itself goes up over time. if it's something where you grow up end of five years it's gone. he could be struggling with ptsd for decades.

so you have nightmares every now and then, but for the most part you're functional. 20 years later something happens in the above break and it's hard to predict and hard to know an true because it not something you can see the immediate illness and know that it's gone. one thing and market carroll's own experience they thought is that you child that was hired. a guy by the name of my puppy. he was a perfect soldier. a guy that mark thought this guy is brilliant. this guy is organized, smart, good-looking. he could do the job perfectly. mike pilkey had deep depression. even more to this point thomas kevin didn't see it. his wife got glimpses. as chaplin had glimpses, but nobody saw it. and then it will tend built inside my worst. mike pilkey killed in so the day

before he was supposed to start working. this is the immense use it correctly it was a baby when i went to a came back and everything was terrible. it is that he went he came back and things build and build until finally there was a break. >> when you get to that part of the book, as heartbreaking as the narrative until that point was, that was among the most devastating things in the boat. this guy mark oleta and was so confident about, felt so good about in the proximity of this undiagnosed, unseen ravaging internal trauma hits and again. it is just devastating in the book. a luster to that so many things that are hard to see and even when you are intentionally trying to see you can always be found in its incredibly poignant. >> hello. dave mattingly.

going back to bite your saying about general case and i think the point you made in the book was that when soldiers supported to iraq and afghanistan and sometimes they were looked at as he is going to be sitting on an fob. in reality, going back and intercede buddies coming back from patrol where their fob coming under attack, that they were still going to sustain the additional trauma of ptsd. it's not something you can say he wasn't infantry or he wasn't not he wasn't out walking the line every day that the ptsd is still out there for other people involved in the operations. >> it's a very fair point. i know people who agree that ptsd came from an explosion again and again. it wasn't that they saw something horrific or their

friend was shot, but the impact of explosion. never quite knowing is it going to hit you? i agree completely. we think trauma is often dramatic. your friend next to you guys shy. no question. but it can be things that on its face don't look quite as bad, don't look quite as severe. when they build one on top of the other, the result is the same. >> thank you. vfw post one. even if we are successful at getting the military -- members of the military educated on dealing with pts and things like that, what are we doing to work with the civilian community out there because if they were

roommates in terms of seeking treatment while they were in the service, there's all kinds of stories about the ticking timebomb to veterans. so what are your thoughts on that quite >> it's a great question. my dear friend phil carter is here and it's an easier hollywood trope to have somebody come back as the ptsd addled soldier. but there are ways a jack reach her movie with tom cruise two years ago with the veteran sniper killing people in the street. it is easy. it's the kind of way of making a character. it's going to be hard. i agree with you. there is one dichotomy who exonerates the culture. at the same time there is a question of is that guy going to go crazy one-day quite is he going to go to work and shoot up the office or kid and it's hard. there are organizations out there that are trying.

i give credit to obama, joel palma -- i did a profile recently of medal of honor tight carter. he was one of the previous series of the war of afghanistan when his base is overran, he kept running out of ammunition to people. he kept trying soldiers. he's the one hero by any sense of the word. he is ptsd. nightmares come alcohol problem. whenever he travels, he has celebrity, and he uses every single speech he has tuesday seeking help doesn't make you weep. makes you strong. one thing he told that it's personally very powerful, you said you go through the trauma of war and you come back and you have not changed, if you're the same as when you left, that is when something is wrong with you. going to war should change you.

you shouldn't go through this and commit to things you commit, see what you see, live what you live, hear what you hear and be the same. i find it very come a very powerful that only been a something wrong with you if you are the same. all you can do is hope that more people like that are out there than the more people who read the book, talking to veterans. describes the psychopath. i agree with you. it is hard. >> hi, my name is diana rodriguez. i'm a freelance writer. i am very interested in the topic because i have many, many friends in the community. i am hoping that this dialogue will perhaps grow the program went down men and women are in training to prepare them and also when they reintegrate into society.

when they come back from the deployment that it won't be i have to go and ask for help. it will be given not dramatically and that there will be some sort a reintegration program where they are given tools to self assist in that it becomes a normal thing that of course you are going to have these feelings and the situations arise. i think that once they make a an applied, like you are saying, but it's natural to have these things ids after months if not years of hypervigilant and this sort of completely for an indifferent to anything i neophytes can even imagine. but it will become a normal part of their training and their reintegration into society. >> as that contemplated?

by this kind about the boot camp level it is seen as cohesion. breaking them down so they, together. the anxiety week notice at the front man, the front man, we're suddenly tampering with unit cohesion. that sort of thing at the boot camp level. >> the phrase they use is the resiliency training. the idea you try to do what you are suggesting of giving people tools so that it isn't that it isn't sent the mayor said the struggling with. it is something where they have some sense of what to do when their own. this is funny to me not because i make light of that, my mom is somebody who's deeply into yoga before yoga became cool, before it became something everyone is doing. the military has adopted yoga. any units easy to learn how to relax. they do deep breathing. sandhu acupuncture and it was

another 30 years ago, but there is no widely accepted. it's interesting an army base and i had this experience of the book where you see 20 a muscular guys walk into a room into yoga. that is now part of how they prepare to go to work. >> i., michael little with the association of the united states navy. i hear everybody talking about the adverse reactions of someone serving a calm the period they come by, the pts kicks in. they ultimately commit suicide or what about the nontraditional deployers, every day of work they feel the mental fatigue every day on a break downscale you may be the guard force, for example, whether in the deployment area and they come back to nothing.

the lady over here asked about who is accountable at that point. where if you are deployed, who is accountable because your commander may not understand what you just deployed to. so when you start showing signs of pts, they may not understand what it is you're going through. we see that more and war and the navy reserves. i apologize for my phone ringing. sorry about that. and so with that, i just want to make sure that it's aware that this is not just combat deployers going out there. these are also the nontraditional deployers. there's mortuary sciences, civil affairs and they are seeing this stuff every day on a break downscale. they come back to nothing. >> they are also not active-duty soldiers. last year one of the things that was very tragic and suicide numbers this big tips, but the suicide among national guard

reserve. i have a lot of friends in the guard and reserve and if and reserve and if you are the active-duty army, the system is not perfect. but if you come back to fort bragg, you come back to a community that does what it is to stairs. your family. your families of other families families to know what it's like peers of the system is imperfect, but it's there. you come back in the national guard to the small town where you live, there may not be a vfw facility. your neighbors may never met someone who served, let alone have a support system. the active-duty soldier may come out to a perfect system. or no system and and that is the heartbreaking part of why these numbers may not go down as much as we all hope they would anytime soon. >> i would say is a moderator who showed up 30 minute wait, your phone can go off. url forgiving. [laughter]

>> okay comic thank you. jackie guerra, director of the defense suicide prevention office. i know mark graham is working really hard tonight because he has been texting me. he is the director for veterans for warriors program, which is the program was set up under the suicide prevention office. so i'm going to take a moment and maybe speak a little bit for mark although that is hard because he's usually right out in front of me. but he is not here and i have the microphone. one of the things that mark and i have spent a lot of time, energy and effort on is building a peer support network within the military community for active duty guard and reserve service members. i am hearing a lot of misperceptions tonight about who is at risk and there's a lot of things being thrown around. we know that our biggest risks are among the young junior

enlisted who i've never deployed, have not been in combat. only 12% to 14% of those who died by suicide have actually been in combat. we know that this is a problem among our youngest of our troops predominately. so america has worked with me and we've built for warriors in this is for you, mark. best for warriors.com would be the way to get in touch with our 24/7 peers support call center. you can call it. you can chat. you can e-mail. we're about to launch a facebook mobile app that will make it more accessible. it is what we are doing that gets lost in what is not being done. so i am hoping this could be sorted to take away message because i know mark is passionate about reaching out,

asking the right questions come to showing that you care, and be nonjudgmental, educating the community, educating what you can do. not as what's wrong with this is done in bad eod, but what we can do with the community within the military, within the services at the guard preserve local, everybody in this room should leave here tonight knowing that there's resources available. and mark is phenomenal running vets for warriors. >> jackie, my point is not to say that dod is bad. the people working these issues care profoundly. it is not some game to work on this assignment. people take this seriously. it is worth waiting out that no system is perfect and this one is not perfect. no matter how hard people work and how intentioned desire. the va is bad, doesn't care.

it does. you say there are things still flawed. one thing in the book is an issue again so you'll forget it, but it means restriction. you try to literally make it harder for a person to kill themselves. so israel had a very high suicide rate and what they were discovering was for decades the soldiers would go home on leave and bring their guns with them. you see israelis in uniform. they're shockingly young. they look like they're 15. they would have their backpack on one side and they were discovering the soldiers killing themselves in large numbers with us and 16 and what they did is take those guns away. the policy changed you do not bring your gun home with the ones leave and so the numbers fell. there's a lot of talk in the military world and civilian world and how you do that. soldiers have weapons.

what do you do? is there a way to control who has to try to have them and if so, cannot help? a short answer is they can. doing it is much harder. i one point the nra had a provision written into legislation that set an officer or senior enlisted could mask a soldier about his personal handguns. the nra is not the same. pete carelli, an interesting man, a complicated man and a friend of a lot of us in the room. they got that stripped away. but that was in there for a short amount of time without anybody knowing it, abusive language that took this idea of making a harder for a person to kill themselves and made that impossible. it took time to fix it. we were talking earlier. one thing they did that they got zero credit for because it is in no way at all.

you have to indicate if you had sought help you do. counseling and this is the biggest type of stigma there could be because if you said yes, you might not get clearance. if you said yes he might lose clearance. >> is just governmentwide. cia was the biggest event her and so they looked at this and thought this is nuts. you have to always admit that you've seen how can you lose your clearance. you're never going to change this. they spent nearly two years of constant lobbying of the cia who pushed back and basically arguing against colleagues. the guy changed. this is a multiyear fight on the chugging along beneath the surface, totally and completely not. they won the fight, but it took a lot. you think about changing a form and that took several years that

people are but the best intentions it's not quite. it's not easy. >> okay, right there. >> dr. david viola here. maybe some things i can add that will afford some clarity on this. when you talk about pts, minus d., you're d., you are not suggesting there is a disorder. so when you incorporate ptsd can do something is out of order. so the stigma attached to this is also a label and this label travels with them, like you just exemplified. so if you compare that scenario of ptsd with "don't ask, don't tell," you will understand that you are hiding pathology. behavioral health is some event is a taboo, especially suicide. there's a lot of embarrassment associated. if you can look at that regard and realize ptsd is real and

that is the term. >> you know, one point that came up in the research of the book in the last part of a ptsd being real, there was a debate in it a legitimate, honest one and they were asked to wrap up the conversation. i'm happy to continue in the back of the room with you. the question of how do you commemorate, how do you memorialize a soldier to kill themselves. people say these are casualties of war they should be memorialize the same way. he carelli when he was in iraq in 2004 when i first met him plus 160 soldiers to combat, but another killed himself. when they came back with the division, they have the names of the ones who died in combat and not the one who killed himself. to this day he said the biggest regret of his life that he did that. the people who say that there's a difference between being shot on foot patrol in shooting yourself come shooting yourself, and people shooting yourself come by people who say one deserves to be honored one way,

one is theirs to be commemorated the other way, they are not bad people. this is not some name or there's good people in that in here is an islands. this is not black and white. this is in the grave. we can accept that ptsd is real, but these invisible wounds are real. we can accept that. we can as a society see how we fix it. there are people trying to do just that. we have to remember this is new on. this is in some way that you can look at someone who needs a prosthetic. his life goes on and is much better. we don't have that lecture rehear. for a country that cares, we need to bear that in mind. this does not go away for the person who has it. this does not go away for a country struggling with suicide or families who've lost tucson and try and get out of bed in the morning. people do it. people find a way to.

keep those two things in mind. one, the issue of your lifetime. two, there's people trying to make it better. what not, i thank you all for your time. [applause] >> let me say a quick thank you to yochi or join us in conversation. as we mentioned before this book you can all see how it really is too everything we are thinking about these days. it will be back there and it will be available to you live. so, thanks again. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> in "justice while black," nick chiles and robbin shipp talk about how to do with police in the criminal justice system in the united states. this is about an hour and 15. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. i am a state representative. they hear tonight is pam stevenson the lawyer here to talk about one of the most timely books that i've had the privilege and honor to read from a friend of mine as well as nick

chiles. first of all, nick, i would like to ask you. before you start asking questions because i would really like to do that and i would like everyone to understand that these are not authors that pot of books. we are talking about someone who has offered 12 books, who has shared prize, like you say. >> the listener. the listener. [applause] 1992. >> from 1992 and 22014, he's continued to write very relevant issues. into my left of him is my friend, i czerny robbin shipp. she has always been very interested in what justice for everyone means. she is an attorney. she is also now an author.

she has been an associate judge in court in dekalb county, but more importantly, she has advocated for young people, older people and i call it just plain families. i am going to ask the first question on this book. what do you mean when you say the first rule of navigating through the system? >> furs, i want to stay thank you for jumping in and doing this kind of at the last minute. and thank you all for being here this evening. this is so exciting. you know, i kind of feel like christmas came early in the form of the book coming out and it's been so well received and being timely. navigating this is really the

process of when young people are engaging with police officers. it happens every single day. the idea was to give guidance. in my experience, i practice law now in excess of 18 years. there were common patterns that i saw in my practice. so we wanted to win particular young folks, brown and black young males help them to understand that there is such a name called the constitution and that that applies to this in their lives. so that is what the book is aimed at doing is giving some sort of god.

>> nick, the interesting part of the book for me is not just the navigation of the young male in the car is how families navigate and survive. in your words, what is the best lesson in the boat for the survival of families that navigate through the system. >> one of the things that became clear to me. it is how important the attorney is to make sure every step of the process that you're not giving away rights that you are not implicating yourself, that you are not doing things that may be actually kind of second nature to you when you get caught up in the system and in the end be very detrimental. people don't think that much about the family portion of it.

when anyone gets caught up in the system, basically everybody and basically everybody in the family is swept into the strawman. a lot of times on what they should or shouldn't be doing. they could be heard in the now defended. it is important for family members. so basically it's important for everyone with some kind of contact with young people. robin gives many examples, there is one where the police knocked on some young persons door the guys sister opens the door to you know this person in the

picture wearing a coat and they've gotten some footage from a camera. he's like a brother. he wore that coat today. that was the first thing she blurted out. of course it is not necessarily wise if you are doing this kind of stuff and you don't have an attorney present, but an attorney will not usually get involved to further down the process. these are things you need to know early on before you have the council at your side. so yeah, everybody who might be in doggedness young person's life needs to know a lot of these blessings. anybody can be guilty of helping the system kind of dragged him into something that perhaps he was not even guilty of. >> robbin always says if you educate a family they will educate the children.

what do you do when a young person is by themselves at 11:30 at night and they are stopped for a traffic violation. what is it that you would tell young people after you taught the family that these are the rules of driving? >> particularly troubled son is driving while black. we have all heard about those instances. i was actually going to meet with a young man who lived approximately 40 miles out i 20. his relatives lived around the corner. i need you to help my nephew. he got charged with a drug case. okay, not a problem. so the more you talk to him, while i can't eat with you in till 8:30. i will come by your house, that

sort of thing. it's not a problem. it's called me. i'm on my way. i'll be sitting here waiting on you. the police are behind me. okay. he's done i 20 in an area that gets a lot of traffic stops. i'm still on the phone with you. let me talk with you while there've been stopped. so the police walk out to the car. he rolls down the window and

it's immediately, where you're going? i'm going to meet with my attorney. in fact, she's on the phone. we smelled marijuana. we need permission to search the car. don't give them permission to search the car. i am yelling this into the phone. my attorney says you can't have permission to search the car. what do you mean you're talking to the attorney. hang up the phone. >> do not hang up the phone. buyer telling him to hang up the phone? do not hang up the phone. so ultimately i jump in the car. i talked to the police. where is their? i was very fearful for this kid. the pretext was that he had a cracked windshield. we are fortunate judge lovett is here. and she knows those are the beginning process of being able to get close to identify some notion of criminal activity.

i don't know if it was because he said he was on the phone with his attorney who they ultimately told him to hang up on or which is really why they got in the car. they went out i 20. at this point it's 10:30 at night. i was very much afraid. but he ended up without a ticket. didn't give them permission to stop and search the vehicle. he was compliant with the officers. when they asked for his license and registration, he gave it to them. that's important to do. that is following the law. what you don't have to do is allow them to search or vehicles. but you don't have to do is explain your activity beyond a simple yes or no answer. you don't have to give additional commentary. so many young people make the

mistake of incriminating themselves in a crime because they think they can talk themselves out of something when they are not very converse is what their constitutional rights and don't understand if they don't have an obligation to incriminate themselves with the situation showing through the picture. the best response would have been because she is not under an obligation to answer the officers question in the manner in which they were inquiring. the best answer would have been why would you want to know? you really need to come back when my parents are home, that sort of thing. but you know, we are compliant

people. we don't want the police involved in our lives. so we want to interact with them and get them gone as quickly as possible. if we don't respond to their stimulus, the interaction is going to be longer and that makes us uncomfortable naturally as we are driving down the highway. i've been stopped a couple times . >> speeding? >> yeah, absolutely. i don't want to interact with them. but neither am i going to condone their overreaching and that happens every single day. >> well, robbin, i have learned recently that ordinary people

are being stopped on this idea of tinted windows. that is the new probable cause of 23rd seed-2014. what do you tell parents about young people with the tinted windows not installed, even by the manufacturer. are you educating parents in regard? do you mention all the triggers of why people are stopped? what do you think about the tinted windows of the new probable cause. >> i don't address the tinted windows so much as i address the overarching context of the gauge meant. and we all grew up with the admonition, don't call me from the jailhouse. i know i grew up with that admonition. i parents were very clear. if you are in the, i don't want to hear from you.

so idea was that more overarching issue of the necessity to be involved. that does not mean they committed a crime. we so often say where there is smoke, there is fire. well actually, people are charged with crimes every single day that they didn't commit and we have to be condescended the fact that they don't stop our kids because they are charged with a crime. just because you've got to go to the right street, but the full county jail is in cause somebody to get them and the inconvenience of our children. they don't stop the dean our

kids just because stuff happens, because it happens every single day. >> that's the next question i'm going to ask. you've played out so well that we teach our children to respect authority. that is the syndrome i called don't call me. my parents did the same thing. if you are in jail, don't give me that call. though we teach our children to follow authority. at the same time, we say as it relates to justice, no searches, the memorable, but just say no. how do you really teach the family, the sister who says that's my brother. i was thinking 30 minutes ago had you been drinking. how do you do with the authority that parents have taught her

sister reality of how to not make that call. >> that is why a book like this become so valuable because so much of the interaction is going to be, as she said, our effort to add this as quickly as possible. our initial thought is usually abbreviated mistake. they pulled me over somehow or they came upon me on the street. there is some reason that they are not understanding why i am the wrong person for them to be dealing with in the situation. all i need to do is tell them the right thing, the specific thing that will make them go away. that is when this whole process starts. one of the overarching issues in the book is the concept of a lot

of those. the context is there is some weird in our country a criminal industrial complex. there's all these systems basically livelihoods, companies traded on the stock market, corporations making hundreds of millions of dollars all dependent upon the police slapping handcuffs, as many as possible on as many people as possible every day of the week. so that means once the cop has once the car passed like the handcuffs on you, there's very little little chance he is going to take them off. he is basically done his job. so you are then these sickly placed on a conveyor belt. so what you are doing when you start throwing all the stuff i've done in start talking and

reading yourself free of it is you give more ammunition, more things you can use when you move into the next step in the station house when he's writing the arrest report, when you're being charged in the courtroom. what we do in the situation is so counterintuitive to what human nature is going to have us do. so that is why it is important to kind of know these facts early on and it's important for parents to start talking about this stuff with young people before they are maybe at the age where the cops are going to start seeing them as perps. so when your kids in middle-school, and for schlichtmann middle-school was a time of innocence. i have a middle schooler right here in front of me.

my nephew is a middle schooler. they're these thought that we don't want to cloud their minds with and they don't want to be thinking about, but that is the time of the need to start having these conversations because when they get to high school and start driving, that is when suddenly this innocent little child is going to be seen if this intimidating figure. so we need to kind a start talking about these things like their constitutional rights and all of the decisions that they need to be making when they interact with police officers because once those handcuffs are on, day or in the system. >> that is right. i call this the gps of the system. let's move this gps to the car or let's say we are in a store.

they not know the friends well. one friend he now picks up another person they know. next time you get a call, you say mom, dad, i was just in the store. joe had larry, but i wasn't doing anything and they are saying i am just as guilty and i was trying to tell them i wasn't doing anything. i was sitting in the car. navigation. what do we do? >> mom, i'm not coming home. in that happened every day. you get in the car and you're going to go to the movies are your in high school and there's

college girls do you get to hang out with. you'll get in the car with some folks that maybe you don't know everybody. maybe you didn't grow up in the elementary school, high school with everybody in the car. and one actor in that car when you pull into the gas station says, you know, i'll be right back, man. i'll be back in a minute. and then he is coming out of the store at full speed. drive, drive. what are you going to do? you are going to drive. that person could've very well committed an armed robbery. when that car is stopped or when the kid with the gun is a deed and they go get him and he says too he was way to do it,

everybody is going to jail. i've had so many cases exactly like that. so what do you do? how do you navigate that? that is often times the parents are most disgusted. i didn't like that kid to start with. i knew there is something wrong with him. what do you do? you get your kid a lawyer. you talk to them before they go hang out at the mall with their friends. if and when it happens because most african-americans, latinos in the northeast, huge emphasis for arab-americans, most people of color at some point it's going to happen. they are going to get pulled over. they are going to get stopped in the store. everybody is going to get pushed

up against the law and everybody is going to get searched. some kids are going to be a weekend out of it because they were the good kid. the one who took the merchandise or the one who held the kind. that's the one who's really going to be in trouble, but everybody else is looking at the possibility of a record. these are just kids. they are kids who do stuff. the kind of stuff we all did when we were kids. i didn't do any armed robberies. [laughter] let me qualify that. you know, we've all got friends who did stuff. we've got to have that conversation that eric holder

talked about he had with his kids, with his son. that is what this is. that is what this book is. >> somebody is always got a little weed, you know, it gets pushed down somewhere where it is called equal access in legal speak, where anybody, two in the back and two in the front. if nobody claims, everybody's getting charged. so you can't talk your way out of it. there's a chapter in the book in fact. just shut up already. please, just shut out. >> that's my favorite chapter. it is equal access. it is in that same car come a friend comes out and they say you know, i need you to do something with the same card.

you don't know they just went and got three cell phones. just shut up already you say. what happens when you are the good kid and you sorted out, but what happens when that good kid really has the cell phone on them and did know they were stolen? speak about that. >> the book in particular, it is not a cure-all. it is not some magic bullet that is going to get you out of it. what it is is an instructional manual, so to speak, that helps a young person be aware that yes, they've got these cell phones on their person, that this is what is the next step in a process. because that is what it is.

.. it's bad. but when they stopped him, they said, well, do you have anything on you? so he proceeds to say, well, i've got a 35-millimeter in