... [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

everyone, to the seventh annual to sun festival of books. i am the host of a half hour public affairs show on sunday mornings. i want to thank cox communications for sponsoring this venue and james osmond for separate response to find this session. i want to go for 50 minutes with questions and answers so hold your questions until the end and immediately following the session the authors will be autographing books, sponsored by bookstore. books will be available to purchase at that location and ian haney lopez will be late

because we interviewing him live on c-span falling this session. if you are enjoying the festival please consider becoming a friend of the festival. your tax-deductible will donations allow the festival programming to be free of charge each year and support critical litter see programs in southern arizona. you can learn more about the friend of the vessel will benefit that information booths on line. at of respect for our authors and your fellow audience members please turn off those darned cellphones. let's introduce our panelists here. next to me we have ian haney lopez who is the author of a dog whistle politics. bill maher eric holder one of the best of the year. he is professor of law at the university of california berkeley. then we have at the 11, he is -- look at this. >> my town.

>> its certainly is. >> miami herald columnist and also the author of a collection of his columns forward from this moment and winner of the 2004 pulitzer prize. all right! welcome man. and rick perlstein's most recent book is the invisible bridge very thick volume. >> i use a 9 m fit. >> not in this latest. is continues is chronicling of the conservative history of america he began with before the storm about arizona's barry goldwater's presidential campaign. continued that with nixonland, the continuing history. to data topic is race and politics and rudy guiliani has had some interesting comments

along these lines recently endive would start with you. the thing president obama america? [laughter] >> i think president obama loves america the same way your right to but i don't think he lives in the same way that let's say newt gingrich for rudy guiliani or sean hannity do which is to say uncritically. i think that he understands -- what is his name? senator al franken had net great line, you don't -- there is a sense among some on the right fit you have to love america like you love your mommy which is to say without any criticism, no blemish, she is perfect and if you deviate from that, that is not love. i think the president loves america like grown-ups love

grown-ups. [applause]. and that is something many on the political right failed to get and obviously the elephant in the room, the reason. it really did it through the giuliani questions the president's love of america is he represents something rudy guiliani finds strange and unsettling. i will say this -- said don't want to get long winded but i will say this. i find it fascinating when african-american people are called upon to verify their love of country because we are the people who loved the country when the country didn't love us back. [applause] >> when my ancestors can tell stories like that of a soldier in the second world war passing from a small louisiana town who wrote about what it was like having to go into the back door of this restaurant eat while the

german prisoners of war on the same train went through the front door and 8 in the dining room and yet he is still suspected and still does shed blood for america. don't you dare question african-american law of country. >> these comments from rudy guiliani, he said president obama doesn't raise the police often enough, should be more like bill cosby. >> nobody should be more like bill cosby. >> he also says these comments can't be racist because obama's mother was right. this is certainly the kind of thing in mean when you talk about dog whistle politics. >> yes. this is the sort of stock question of patriotism that you see in this sort of left and/right dynamic but there's another dynamic too which is an effort to stir racial anxiety,

an effort to stir fear, to exaggerate difference and operates in code. it operates in terms that on the surface don't say obama the black man but notice rudy giuliani said the reason he doesn't love america is because he wasn't raised like you and i were. it there is something fundamental in his upbringing and his parentage. they say he has this white parents, that too has this sort of wrote within the conservative critique of obama as if to say obama was raised by whites and yet identifies as black. isn't this another example of racial be frail, racial loyalty on obama's part to blacks and not to whites. this is operating as what is called in the political lexicon dodd whistling. it blows that such a high register you can't hear it but

it triggers strong reactions. says the metaphor of coated speech. on one level this it's a race directly? no. it is silent but at another, it is strongly triggering racial anxiety. >> recalled for the record that barack obama was not raised by rudy guiliani was. his father was not a convicted felon and his uncle was not in charge of the mafia. [applause] and with that i dropped the mic. >> okay, we are done. you go back into the 1916s you're covering the civil rights movement, talk a little bit about the development of these dog whistle politics. >> the most important foundation

to make about this is this is a tribute the vice mix of religion. the fact is martin luther king said it does bend toward justice. and since the history of our civilization is one of greater freedom, the acceptance of more and more people into the citizenry, at least nominal equals, first women get to vote and then african-americans get to vote and gays and lesbians get to mary, etc. etc. and in a big theoretical sense what conservatism is is strong allying at today's extension liberty and once that becomes taken for granted retroactively saying we were for that all along. conservatives embracing martin luther king, conservatives even embracing the right of women to

vote although an coulter said that should be taken away because it would be better for conservatism. the serious point is this is foundational in what all conservatives across countries, they have to pay lip service to the things that are taken for granted as part of the american patrimony. so when they have to -- they can't say racist things explicitly. this is a tribute to the martyrs for just as we all celebrate. conservatism fundamentally in every generation has these sorts of faults liberal rhetoric going on. sidney blum and fall in the in the nfl took another 99 deal is called the shadow was a liberal as some. so the fight to preserve

social security in there fighting for greater civil rights for christians, etc. etc. which in the 1960's it was a communist plot to. so that is why you need this but i will just make one more point but the important thing is people forget this is arguable but i would argue is that barack above is hated and despised pretty much equally as bill clinton did in a blunt dash - - was in the 1990's remember he was running cocaine out of arkansas a and he better duck come to my state because he might be shot. it is easy to forget that it is not exclusively race but

not to see that as a legitimate partner to govern the country another reason why that is seen it is profoundly related to raise in the extension of american citizenship to of african american and so it is messed up in a crazy way symbolized by tony morrison sitting it was the first black president of sprint and other republicans said they wished they had a president like bill clinton that they could work with. [laughter] >> talking about the moral arc of the university of president obama recently was up the osama march to see racism is in decline but your book says it is not so much anticline but changing its face? can you talk about that?

and began to pick up on and conservatism who are we as a people? i think we are quite liberal in the sense of working hard to share prosperity and take care of each other we are in this together that was the essence of the depression that launched the new deal or the spirit that had the biggest expansion of middle-class ever so what happened we turned against that spirit or a repudiation of an that government is supposed to help all of us around 72 when nixon started to talk about law and order enforced busing? what about ronald reagan did you see in the quality starts to skyrocket to the levels we haven't seen in 100 years. what happened there?

this isn't just about conservatism but in some ways it think we are witnessing is when it is described as slow but steady social change with the tense to respect social institutions that sounds like of separatism to read but not with the conservatives of today are saying. they are saying fear minorities your fellow americans, gays, women who want to work or have access to abortion and the government because it keeps calling those people so vote against government don't pay attention would you vote against government you turn over to the koch brothers. don't worry about that you will be okay of the richest 1 percent controls 30% of

the wealth of the whole country. that is not the conservatism that cares about the whole society better reactionary free-market with its vision. . . that is marked coin. delete is going to grab what it can and have the country at don't have to worry that you people because you have an entitlement mentality and you refuse to take responsibility for yourself. what is driving this? a lot of what is driving this is racial anxiety being stoked by the right purposefully. is not sort of a conservative we want to make sure social change occurs slowly, it is an actual manipulation of people. a stampeding of their fear speaking of arizona, speaking in arizona you know this politics. >> this is sb1070. your legislators telling you that mexican american studies in

tucson is about hating white home people. that ludicrous but it creates fear. to this arc of the moral universe, it has to be in code because most people overwhelmingly would reject any politician that said to them stand with me because i'm going to protect the good white folks of the world. they'd reject it. we has a country have repudiated that racism but we have to work harder to see that the repudiated -- the racism we repudiated the white supremacist rhetoric has morphed in a language of culture and behavior that says, this isn't about brown people this is about illegal aliens who are criminals and bring disease are and sneaking across the border and bringing isis and ebola with them. no. this is about old racial anxieties and we need to repudiate those as well. >> can i just fine-tune one thing there. i agree with everything you said. i don't know it's so much be

repudiated racism as much as we think we have as we have reputaded the raw language but the actual emotional and feeling, i think in a lot of ways conservatives and perhaps beyond that, we have taught ourselves or awe loud ourselves to feelmer comfortable with -- feel more comfort able with. you welcome feel the this wills but don't have to acknowledge, even to yourself the stuff you're feeling. the other point i will make, just in terms of conservatives, i found it interesting when george will startled using -- when he wanted to refer to people like himself, he started using the phrase thoughtful conservatives. thoughtful conservatives feel this and -- and the very fact you have to use that modifier suggests you realize there are. >> right right. >> -- that a lot of your folks

aren't wrapped too tight. i just always found that very interesting. >> rich? >> great stuff. well, i don't want to get too pedantic put one of my favorite books of conservative is cory robbins, and burk also was reaction area, but let me talk about actually in ian's work he talks about politics as a way of the w. percent propping up their privilege, and i live in chicago, and we're in the midst of a very exciting, probably historic mayoral election as we have had since 1987 and the fellow who is the inincumbent, his name is rahm, and the fellow running against him is named jesus garcia, a member of the county board and a member of the city council under the great african-american mayor, harold

washington, who died after he won second term. now, rahm emanuel has the support of lots of republicans alet of members of the one percent. he recently good at $250,000 donation because, like in the state we don't have campaign finance reform in chicago, from republican hedge fund manager who gave a million dollars to the republican gubernatorial candidate, and recently our senator, mark kirk, a republican said if we elect chewy garsor, who is mexican momentum we might have another detroit. now, the fact pattern as the lawyers will say is very striking. chewy garcia was part of a city council that actually balanced the budget actually raised property taxes because they were kind of too low to support the services and as a member off our county board, was part of a team that balanced the county budget. a budget like they can't possibly ever balance this, and then some progressive people

came in, took hard look at the fat and paidtronnage and bundled the budget and lowered taxes. all of the stuff, the austerity politicians and one percent and the editorialists are not supposed to favor but they endorse rahm emanuel. what is going on here in the fact is rahm emanuel suffered a downgrading of chicago's bonds for the fifth time in his term to near junk. he is objectively fiscally irresponsible, running against a guy who is objectively responsible, and yet the guy who happens not to be white is the guy that somehow gets associated with the city of detroit. which of course is run by african-americans. textbook dog whistle politics and it's very persuasive. you hear, well, chewy seems like a nice guy and rahm is not nice guy but rahm can make the tough decisions to balance our budget. so we see this it rated and

reiterated and reiterateed and reiterate, and luckily the anymore the city who know what tough guy and is a cured is, are rejecting this. elsewhere, you guys are fighting. >> let me ask you about the whole idea of rejecting this. seems as if the countries i self-sorting between the democratic party, the republican party, the republican party relying on white voters. do you think future generations are going to start to reject these dog whistle politics and see them for what they center you were at the selma march and you wrote a column expressing concern that -- not the selma march but the 50th 50th anniversary -- >> i'm looking good for 107, aren't i. very, very good, sir. >> i want to ask you, you expressed concern that the young people who were showing up didn't really know the history of why that was so important.

>> i have that concern about young people in this country with regard to pretty much everything and i try not to -- i try not to do a kids these days rant because i think that a lot of the def sets kids these days are facing are as a result of people my age and our failure to teach and to reach and to pass down stuff they should know. so i'm much concerned with the fact that things like selma, and the importance of what happened there, that things like the importance of what happened in -- with the civil rights act and even beyond just the realm of race and politics the country, are being lost because we as americans do not teach our children well to steal from a song. and i am -- i believe deeply in the truth of thed adage that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. i find heartbreaking that 50

years after the voting rights act i'm writing columns defending and demanding the re-invigoration of the voting rights act. shouldn't have to be debating rapid paul of the civil rights act in 2013. something is wrong with this picture. i think that as americans we have this vision of our history our racial and political history, that says this is something that should be off limits. we should not talk about this. i i write.history a lot in my column because i like to give cob text to things that happen. i reject the idea that what happened happen here doesn't have bearing on what happened 50 years ago. only when i write about the ugliness of race do i receive e-mails saying whoa are you bridging thing these things system you're living too much in the past. nobody said that to me about the marshall plan or the holocaust

or about the moon landing. the kennedy assassination. we feel however we feel about those things and some of them -- the marshal plan makes us feel proud, the moon landing. most of the racial history in the country makes us feel other than proud. the past is not passed but we're determine to live without the pass. >> i'm a junior member. i am 45 and can speak out for the kids. [laughter] >> okay, young fella. >> you're not going let my age and inexperience get in the way. >> exactly. the point i was making was i don't think there's anything wrong with the kids. there's something wrong with us as the older generation having not really bothered to teach them. we sort of assumed they know. these things and martin luther

king to take one example, is just has been relegated to a mcdonald's hamburger commercial, and kids have this vague idea of he stood for peace and love and he has become generic enough and hallmarked enough that republicans can stand up and say we all stood with martin luther king. no you didn't. not only did you not stand with the conserve -- conservatives shy say -- not unrepublicans -- he when he identity a lot of black people didn't stand with martin luther king. there were reasons he was scary and dangerous and he was kill and we don't talk about that. we mash everything down to the sort of kool-aid of history and then wonder why our kids don't get it. talking about your generation. >> ronald reagan in 1968 when martin luther king was assassinated basically said, it's really a sad tragic thing but this is the guy who said you can choose the laws you follow.

the thing is about history and far be it from me to say we shouldn't teach more of it -- i think there arlet of young people who are very engaged in history, and know about selma, and if they see the movie, there were lots of kind of historical mistakes but it established brilliantly was that martin luther king was a war leader. he was going to war. he was about confronting people in the most dramatic possible fashion and was planning like a george marshall or dwight eisenhower for confrontations that were creating tensions. so i think 'see that movie and accept he was a santa claus figure, which is kind of good. >> you're talking bat movie that came out last year. so -- >> i think at a lot of conservatives know the excite they know why selma -- >> a lot of people of certain ages know their history, which is why they want to make sure people of your ten at the

years -- tender years don't learn it. >> the letters you get when you've write about race this is really important but a it connects to the ethnic studies thing in arizona, and i connects to the backlash against ap history, which we have seen in state after state where the people who are running the ap history, the college board, are saying, here's the things you should teach and conservatives look at that and say it's not celebratory enough about america. my book invisible bridge, the central point of it is that there was a very fruitful and exciting debate about the meaning of patriotism what is patriotism in the 70s. is it saluting the flag? , my country right or wrong or taking a hard, critical look at our structural flaws and addressing them? and that was a very difficult conversation and one decisively by the side saying history should be about happy stuff and

i call that the powerlessness of positive thinking. you can't have a better country unless you actually understand what we need to better. >> i don't think anyone will doubt that rick doesn't know a little bit about history. ion, you have not had a chance to weigh in here. >> i think partly it's history but i think it's contemporary racial etiquette. that is how are we supposed to talk about race? mtv, which is an incredible source of great research, or not, but in any event they research their audience. they've been doing polling with these millenial. they've done some great research especially among white youth. show that somewhere between 70%le and 0% of white youth believe in racial equality and believe we shouldn't talk about race. and now here's another figure from the mtv survey. 60% of whites -- of these white youth believe that racism against whites is just as bad as

racism against blacks. and these are connected. so the racial etiquette that has actually been pushed by conservatives for the last 40-50 years, is never talk about race. if you talk about race, if you say the word black or say the word racism you say it outloud, you're the racist. you're playing the race card. you're trying to take advantage of stoking racial -- you're the real racist. so all of white house actually want to talk about race, we're silenced, we're accused of being the real racist while at the same time this coded drum beat about illegal aliens-about gang bangers, inner city poverty, welfare cheats and welfare queens, that's constantly permeate our society. so we're constantly engaged in racial inwindow but -- innuendo but we can't talk about race and it's this combination halt has led so many people to

internalize the idea that isn't sort of structural discrimination against minorities. they're trapped in the inner cities, they're poor not well-presented among the ceos of the fortune 500 countries it's because of defective cultures on their part. we don't have the spice have an honest dialogue that says what is happening in race today, and i want to say to you all i imagine that many of you have adopted the same strategy with your peers with your children that the subject seems so volatile so taboo, you're better off not talking explicitly about race. if you don't talk about it explicitly, like any social dynamic or any family dynamic, you don't talk about it it's going to fester. we have got to reject this idea that color blind unless is the way with get ahead. local blindness is an enormous problem. we way we get ahead in terms of race and in terms of politics is by surfacing all these coded

racial conversations and actually having them amongst ourselves and with our kids. >> i am -- you remind -- [applause] >> you remind me of an e-mail i received from reader once which said, and i quote, should not talk about race because it was not polite. and when you said quit, that struck me. the whole thing of you talk about race, therefore you must be a racist, is such a logical non sequitur i found it difficult to believe that someone actually believed that, but i can report to you with confidence that they do. this is the mindset. my feeling is if talking about a thing makes you the most extreme iteration of that thing, then from now on let me talk about money. >> can i get a loan? >> so i may become a billionaire. you're exactly right. i'm just cosigning what you said. you're exactly right. we entered into this weird thing where we're not allowed under

conservative eto thes to talk -- ethos, to talk about race. it's so scary. in meantime, stuff festers. >> the way that -- take it back to history, i love this phrase, racial etiquette. the architect the most profound architect of this racial etiquette is a guy most of us agree was a brilliant rhetorical act, ronald wilson reagan, and i write about that in "invisible bridge. "there -- bridge" he wasn't the biggest dog whistler in the world. there are other examples. but he was a person who -- this racial etiquette was his grift gift to white america, and the way he bestowed the gifts what i call a lit temperature --

liturgy of abc luigs -- an solution, that white people need not think of it anymore because they were not racist. the invisible bridge. it's magic. and -- but give some specific examples, on the radio in 1975. no governor anymore, like a radio commentator, and he cites a poll he never says where he got the poll that of black people in washington, dc. and he says, even more than the white people in washington, dc, it's the black people who want the death penalty, who want bigger criminal satisfactions, who are afraid of black crime. so if you say that calling for law and order is racist it turns out you're racist because you're not only against whites, your against blacks who want this tough stuff. and he of course very famously told all sorts of stories that

turned out to be quite fanciful about this open racial innocence. when he was a baseball announcer he fought for integration even though he had achieved integration in baseball, even though he was an announcer in the '30s and that happened in the '40s, and he said people like him were criticizing the official rule book of baseball which the book started with this is a game for caucasian gentlemen. but the truth he was delivering was so seductive, and so powerful and so poisonous and that's one of the reasons why if you criticize reagan or even speak of him as a three-dimensional historical figure, warts and all you will receive the same vie toupe racing you will seive in pointing out that in the town of ferguson missouri if you're

black and you drive without a headlightings you may end up in jail for other long time because you can't pay your fine or you may miss your court date because they arbitrarily change the times. you'll be met with the kind of rage that leonard is talking about, because you're touching something very deep in people. and they're good people, they'ren ins. >> there's a sense in -- they're innocents. >> there's a sense that reagan conferred and is conveyed now by the likes of fox and elsewhere of racial innocence. there's an an an solution. it is failures their culture or failures of things that they need to do things that they need to fix and has nothing to do with you. tell people the thing about

race dysfunction is it nose at matter of either/or but both/and. when i hear african-americans say all the issues are racism i get fruit evidence. when i hear white americans say -- if we want to bring improvement to the community we could turn off television. we could do something and this is already underway to restore the nuclear family to the table. and conservatives are yay up and applauding but the fact of the matter is, once i have that child and turned off the television and made him a scholar, what good does that do me if you're allowed to shoot him down because he is wearing a damn hoodie and hi scholar is dead. and you're going to claim, okay, culture made me do it. what good does it do me for to

do the work interior to the community to row store dad to the table if dad can't get a job or can't get to the job because he gets stopped for existing while black. so it's like there's this whole either/or dynamic we buy into and it's both/and. and i think african-americans are much more lucky to recognize that. white americans have been given this sleeping pill or this magic dust wherein they absolve themselves of any responsibility so that dynamic, and it i can mas for very very frustrating conversations because we'll -- i grew up naively perhaps believing if we're having a debate, he who has the facts wins. and if i can show you empirically where racism is not a vested, where racism exists and lingers and continues and deforms lives and aspirations in

this country, i would think that would give me some credibility in the argument. my statistics do not come from the nation of islam mitchell statistics do not come from the naacp. my taxes -- my statistics from from the depth of justice of the united states and various think tanks and mtv. >> i don't know if those statistics can match what fox news will tell you. and i wanted to touch on -- before we go to questions from the audience -- the point you make in your book, the connection between these dog whistle politics and the disintegration of the middle class. >> i think that's the other half of the story that we don't talk about nearly enough. i think we're more and more comfortable with the idea that our electoral politics is organized around race. so a couple of quick statistics. no democratic candidate for president has won a majority of the white vote since 1964. it's been over 50 years.

or -- >> i did not know that. >> the republican party today draws 94% of its support from whites. and 98% of its elected officials are white. that is a level of segregation you wouldn't expect to see in a golf club. [laughter] >> but that's one of the two major parties. something is wrong. here's this important other half that's been so destructive. whites are being granted racial an solution. at the very moment they're being encouraged to think in racial terms. you deserve everything you got. you're heard working and decent but government is take mid-michigan from your paycheck and wasting it on minorities in welfare and the government refuses to control those criminal black people through lax criminal laws, refuses to control those surging tied tide of brown people fear black

people, fear brown people, fear government, vote in a way that turns government -- that cuts taxes for their very rich and that has control over the corporations. and that is the politics we have been living. a couple consecutive quick points to make here. this hasn't been just the republicans. the democrats didn't know how to respond. they stayed silent and then with bill clinton they adopted the same tactics. >> rahm. >> and rahm emanuel. the democrats look around and say, man this poison politics works. let's get some ourselves. with we can't beat them, let's join them and that hayes helped shift the entire politics of the country to the right. second quick point. most of the whites who are bamboozled by this politics are good people. they are good people. and they're in crisis. right? if you're not the koch brothers things are looking bad after 2007 and people lost their pensions and jobs and not sure hour how their kids are going to get through school and the kidded won't have the same

quality of life, and they're right, they're not. they need an explanation, and what is dangerous with democratic include destructive is conservatives are saying we'll give you an explanation those powerless black and brown people did it to you. it's women who want access to jobs. they did it to you. it's gay marriage they did it to you. we need to get beyond that politics to say no. when our government is hijacked to serve the interests of the very rich, that's going to be destructive for the middle class, and this is fact. look at what happened with wealth inequality. it has surged since then 1970s andit is now at level wes haven't seen since the roaring 20s before the great depression. that is what -- we are as a society on a bring brink of a major catastrophe because we are being told don't worry about very rich, fear the car and powerless, and with need to get beyond -- fear the poor and the powerless, and we need to get beyond that. [applause]

>> if i can just cosign that and ad one point. the bamboozling of the white underclass is a very old game in this country. whenever i think about that, i take it back to 1861 when poor white people are somehow convinced to become cannon fodder for wealthy slave openers and by being told -- this is a lie that persists to this day-door you're not fight are for slavery. you're fighting for states rights. a very popular topic here in arizona. you guys have brought up the sb1070s, and the ethnic studies laws where a course that was challenging to the status quo was declared a plot to overthrow the government and actually they passed laws to show these people they were not oppressed by destroying their educational program, which i thought was somewhat ironic. so i -- we have to go to

questiones from the audience here. i'd invite folks to line up at the microphone. i also would ask this last election the voter turnout was terrible. what do -- have any thoughts on why so many people just stayed home and didn't vote? >> so, i think it's a dynamic in which, look liberalism itself has become tainted as a stop to minorities and that means that democratic politicians cannot come out in favor of liberal policies because it opens them up to the attack they're really just helping minorities and if your 0 black democratic president you especially have to be careful about excessive liberalism. that means that barack obama, once he was anything rate he tracked far to the right so much for the change we were promised. he tacked far to the right, and i think by the time you get to 2014 it's hard for people to be

mobilized and animated to come out in support him. now, who we have gotten post-2014 i wish with had gotten that person in 2009. >> voter turnout, of course the more people vote roughly speaking the better democrats and liberalsed do. that's historical fact of long establishment. which is why there's so much negative campaigning on the right. one of the new right leaders at a speech chose not use a dog whistle and said wester want fewer people to vote. we want our people to vote. and so that's why you see so much negative campaigning. every time you've see a negative ad it's designed to depress turnout and get people to be disgust offed by the process. >> and voter disenfranchisement, and we are seeing levels of voter suppression we haven't seep since reconstruction, since the systemic effort to disenfranchise black in the late

19th century. it's unbelievable what is going on across the country. >> it's a strategy. >> it is and it's connected to dog whistle politics. we're trying to get anxious whites to vote and disenfranchise as many minorities and poor white people. >> and young people. they changed the rules so you can't vote at your college campus. >> let's take some questions. you, sir, over here. >> yes. i was vary very fortunate as a young teenager to have a very brief period in one grade school class of the teacher presenting us the basics of propaganda and that was very short period of time. by way of that example, historically personally what do you as a panel have to offer that the media representative on the panel can convey to the powers to be in the state by way

of early education, to really reduce the problem so that 20 years from now we can have a much happier content panel such as this? >> all the responsibility on the media representative on the panel. >> good luck with that one. >> i can do what i can do which is to write a column with highlighting those and other concerns, but the real power lies in the voters which as we just discussed have been sort of swept from the voting booth or discouraged from the voting booth for a variety of reasons. all i do is stand -- i do the same thing you do except die it with a megaphone. i get access to the media megaphone and get to yell, this sucks, basically. i try to state it in more eloquent language but basically this sucks. what happens with the electorate after that is something i have

control over. >> i think that the television advertisements are the mega megaphone that drown out what the media have to say. >> i'm a lowly print describe. >> there's an answer to how to educate kits to fight these prom lemes. i mentioned cory robin he had a column about his young daughter's private school in new york and there's tons of talk about america's racial problems and history in their school. they get assemblies about understanding privilege, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. they're taught about culturals and the real martin luther king, jr. and the rest. they're not taught they're part of the problem in inequality in america because they attend to africaing $30,000, $40,000 a year prep school. >> so we needmer direct talk about inequality and how we're part of the problem. i would say a leadership class.

they have an easy time talking about race. they can talk below barack obama and cheryl sandberg and leaning it. what they can't talk about more people are being enfranchised and brought into a class that is disenfranchising the folks trying to climb up the ladder they were able to climb up. >> that's all true but i also think in addition we need to understand that both the republican and the democratic party today are so heavily dependent on large campaign contributions that we should not aim or demands at them. this is a period in the nation's history in which we need to think seriously about social mobilization, we need to connect with "occupy" occupy with the tucson ethnic studies folks, with immigration folks, with the black lives matters movements and we need to see -- and with unions we knee so see there is a broad need for sweeping social mobilization in the public. once we're mobilized

politicians will come. but we need mobilize. >> politicians don't lead, they follow. it's very important in these discussions to have not just bad news but hope and not be a one note sound bite here but in chicago, it's first round of or mayorol election the candidate who was outspent 12-1, came within ten points and denice the candidate penalling the billionaires' money an outright victory and that was done through mobilization. >> let's come over here for a question. >> misquestion was everything you just finished talking about. but there are two elements that haven't been addressed and when i think about the arc of history i wonder if it's going to crash and burn at citizens united and gerrymandering in the states. how are those two things overcome? >> all of the conserve -- this is the most business-friendly court since the 1920s. this is a racially reaction area

court. all a series of 5-4 decisions. we need to change the composition of the court. i'm a command law professor. i -- common law professor and i connect it's note dock trend. it's the politics of the justices and the polling ticks of those who appointed them. we need to mobilize and put pressure on the people we elect to appoint different sorts of justices. but you're right negligence the short term things like citizens united is entirely disruptive but a justified 5-4 decision. some of the conservatives are going retire. if we have liberals in the white house, and they make the right sort of appointments that decision can be overturned. >> i got a quick one on that one. >> absolutely true. >> and also that -- this is kind of like the winston churchill thing, americans make the right decision when they exhausted all the other alternatives. my friend talks about how when

america democracy -- the democratic structures themselves are at a crisis point somehow we manage to pull out of the nosedive. 1916 we passledded -- earlier -- the 16th amendment, the income tax, which got rid of the plutocracy of the era. the 30s we had the new deal in the 60s when young people were sent off to war cannon fodder we got the 21-year-old vote in 1972. so it doesn't happen magically and not going to happen by just kind of, things are bad so they're going to get good, but structural reforms have in do and can happen. >> question over here. >> related. if you could talk to justice roberts' about the voting rights act decision what would you say? >> i would say please sir, explain to me -- i understand that you are a law scholar and i'm just a middling person here, but can you please explain to me the logic by which you decide

that the fact that a thing has worked means that thing is no longer required? i don't get it, sir. please explain this to me, sir and please explain to me what i am supposed to -- please explain to me why i'm not supposed to fear as a person who has read halet of history and a person phenomenon with historical cycles and a person who is familiar with how reconstruction was overthrown the first time. please tell me how i'm not supposed to fear that a decision you have made which is going to make it more difficult for women, for young people and for african-american people, among others to -- and poor people to vote why i should not fear that is going to deform american elections as much or more than your equally misguided citizens united decision did sir? >> i would say that the -- given

what my friend mr. fitz just said to you, why didn't you look at the cartridges -- the rounds that are chambered in the shotgun and the rifles in the state legislators for the second you overturn this law. >> exactly. >> i guess i would say something different. i don't think i'd engage him in a colloquy. i think i'd say to him you're contributing to destroying our democracy, and you're using the power of the supreme court to overturn decisions that the rest of us are passing to try to protect ourselves from the rich and the powerful. decisions that the rest of us have enacted to move toward a racially egalitarian society through the voting rights act. you are a danger to our democracy and it is incumbent on people like me as a constitutional law scholar and on informed citizens like you al to strip chief justice john roberts and the supreme court of the legitimacy that it itself has squandered in these highly

political, highly damaging decisions. [applause] >> a 3-0 decision right there. >> unfortunately we're out of time here and i wish the panel could gophone for another hour. [applause] >> i want to thank you all for attending this session. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv's live coverage of the 2015 tucson book festival. we're on the campus of the university of arizona. the panel you just herd, rick perillen steen, leonard pitts and professor ian haney lopez. professor lopez, dos dog whistle politics is joining us to do a coll call-in program with our national tv audience.

>> professor ian haney lopez. a lot of conversation on this panel about -- can you give an example of what something that was said on fox news that is a dog whistle politic? >> guest: i think it's appropriate to pay attention to fox news because i think fox news is a megaphone for racial fear so you wouldn't name just one thing. you'd name the constant. [drumming] beat. worry about muslims as potential terrorists in the middle east and the hearland, worry about whether the president himself is a muslim. worry about undocumented immigrants framed in the language of illegal aliens. worries about this idea that undocumented emts are coming across the border to take over the country; fox news places up this idea there's a reconquest going on. all of these sorts of conversations are dog whistles

and let's be clear. this dog whys until a sense that on the surface they're not expressly about race but right underneath there's a sense a they're designed to trigger racial panic. >> host: one other comment before we go to calls a lot of conversation about having conversations about race. we have been having this conversation about conversations for a long time. >> guest: i don't think we have. think something very different happened in the 1960s, 19 7s so, as conservatives started to use race as a racial wedge issue, liberals could see it happening and said to themselves, we're losing when it comes to racial conversation. maybe we should stop talking about race, back away from minorities a bit and so what happens is starting in the 1970s, liberals stopped talking about race. when i say liberals issue mean liberal politicians and also mean liberal pundits, the liberal media, "the new york

times," liberal foundations, things like unions. by and large all of the institutions withdraw from an engaged conversation about race as if we're not talking about race but only liberals with drew. at the same time conservatives doubled down on race through code language, states rights forced busing. well square finds muslim terrorist, inner cities in crisis the uncontrolled southern border all of that is race talk or racial innuendo but we have not had an actual dialogue how race workness our society, not just to hurt minoritieses but scare whites into voting for a system of government that is help thing very rich and hurting them. >> host: uc berkeley professor in haney lopez is our guest. how coded racial appeals have re-invented racism and wrecked the middle class. here is the cover othe become. the first call for him comes

from mark in white hall, pennsylvania. mark, you're on booktv. >> caller: thank you petitioner, and thank you, mr. haney lopez. just a quick comment. i know mr. slen is quick on questions so i'll try to do the comment section as short is a and can the question quick. so anyway cookstown university and university i went to, we took a field trip '04, so i nailed president bush and senator obama some books and -- institutional discrimination at the executive level and that's right before barack obama appeared at the 2004 democratic national convention. so, it was the institutional discrimination thing i believe propelled senator obama to run for president. however, the question would be, more of a comment.

i think people look at other people or all people as a doctor would, medically, i would say the same color, the nervous system is gray the brain and the blood of every person is red. so i think if we look at it in the context of how a doctor would look biologically a whole human being rather than this superficial destroy that would be the best we to go. any comment. you guys are ex-len. that's just a little bit of a -- >> thank you very much. we appreciate the call. professor lopez. >> guest: i think mark's comment was terrific. on one level, and on another level unfortunately he misses something important. so what did he get right? he got right we're all human. that it's just skin color underneath the skin color we all have red blood we're all human and that's just such a huge point of we have to understand

each other as suffering the same pain having the same hope, andensing love and dreams the same way, experiencing sorrow, we are all human. that is incredibly important. what did he miss? that we're not all located in society in the same position. that our society is structured in terms of hierarchies, that say men are better than women, straights are better than gays, whites are better than blacks and browns and yellows. that sort of idea is not just a set of beliefs. it's a set of practices that have been institutionalized, and this picks up what mark was talking about at the outset of his question, institutional discrimination. if you want to see how race works in america look at your own city your open town. the neighbors occupied by whites and the neighborhoods occupied by blacks and browns. look at what happens in our inner cities and our prisons versus what happens in the boardroom of our biggest

corporations. race as a system of organizing people in terms of supposed hierarchy, of those who are deserving and those who are threatening, it has distorted our society, and the way to break that down is to pick up on mark's first insight to realize, hey, this isn't right. our society shouldn't be fragmented shouldn't be arranged this way. we are all basically the same under the skin. we all have the same fears and hopes for our children. >> host: next call from glen in freeland michigan. glen welcome to become tv in tucson. >> caller: thank you all very much. professor, i don't want to sound disrespectful or anything, but frankly, i think most of your dog whistle politics theory is basically the same old politically correct dog manure and i give you advice. a bad idea to act like you know better than other people what is

in other people's best interests. let me ask you a specific question though about immigration. you were all talking about terrible influence of big money and big business and all that in your previous panel. why do you think it is that big money and big business spend so much money lobbying to keep immigration levels as high as possible and immigration laws as weak as possible. might be because they like the cheap labor and like to keep wages as low as possible? >> host: thank you, sir. >> guest: glen, i disagree with the first part but like the second part of the question. we need to be really clear. as to the first part there is a standard move in conservative rhetoric to defend these sorts of practices, and the standard move is to say, hey the person who actually names and surfaces

race, they're the ones who are being politically correct, being divisive. that's just not right. it would be like saying the person who dials 9-1-1 must have committed the crime. the person who pulled the fire alarm must have set the fire. i with have an important polite:dynamic that is distorting our society we need to name and it talk about it. we can disagree but we need talk about it. the second part. great question about immigration. here's the basic dynamic. at the very top the corporations do have an interest in immigration, in lax immigration laws that allows them to bring in people who have been highly educated outside of the you'd. -- the united states why? because this keeps them from having to invest in the tacks and public educations to make sure americans are highly educated. we should have a serious conversation about immigration, about immigration reform in a way that says what is best for the united states what's best for american workers?

but at the same time, these same political actors know that they can win votes for their policies of deregulation cutting taxes for the rich if they scare white voters about other sorts of immigrants undocumented immigrants, and so at the same time they want lax immigration laws for technical workers, they also continually pound at the threat supposedly represented by the poor who are coming across to take low-paying low-skilled jobs. that's how this sort of politics is working out. they have one set of policy interests but they also have this demagogue of politics they know works and they're willing to pound the drums of racial fear. >> host: everett is watching book temperature in hawai'i. please go ahead with your question for professor ian haney lopez. >> caller: yes. professor, i am really enjoyed your articulation of ideas that

strike home with me. but -- and i have a very slight question to pose to you and that is why was the audience at this presentation so wonderfully made consisting almost entirely of white people? i scanned the entire audience and never saw a person of color. did you notice that, too? >> host: there were three. counted in fact during this conversation. >> guest: so see? some slight representation. everett, i want to say aloha to you. i grew up in hawai'i. so miss home. lisp in terms of your question this is how race works in our society. this is what we're seeing. we are not a fully integrated society. we're a society in which race makes a difference in terms of access, in terms of political engagement in terms of a sense that one is welcome, that one

belongs. and so i think what you have picked up on is really a concrete example concrete illustration of how we are a racially separated society. this is our challenge. we have got to be able to talk across race lines to reask flies our basic humanity and break down the ability of race to serve as a we that scares people into voting for politicians who really don't care about many of us at all but who are really subservient to the interest of big corporate donors. >> host: well, if arrest was calling from city called -- i didn't want to mispronounce it -- kamuela. >> guest: i grew up on the island of oahu. >> host: why did you grow up in hawai'i. >> guest: my folks interracial couple, net san francisco, moved to hawai'i in the early 1960s. i was born and raise threads. many of your viewers won't know but i tapedded the same high school as barack obama. i was a freshman when he was senior. i attended the same law school.

we graduated the same year. i don't actually know him but we overlap substantially in our upbringing and our law school. >> host: and ian haney lopez wrote this book: "dog whistle politics." david, maryland hi david. >> caller: hello? >> host: go ahead. >> caller: oh, yes, this is david. just had a question. isn't it more about power and greed in the voting thing that people -- the earth at risk and our home on earth that the supreme court would -- especially about power and greed and existence of the human beings on the earth that it's come at a turning point now that everything that rests now not just -- really comes down to that that we keep going in this direction, and how long will we sustain life on this planet if

we don't address -- >> guest: i completely agree with you. >> host: thank you, sir. >> guest: i completely agree with you eye. using the vocabulary of race but at the end of the day what i'm really talking about is power. how does power organize itself? how does power consolidate? how is pour wielded in a democracy. right now our politics are leading our country in a direction that is harmful. it's harmful to the majority of americans. we see this in the great recession of 2007-2008. we see this in trunk indicated life changes and also see it and what you're talking about wet have not successfully enaberdeen series of policies that will help with global warming. why are we so slow to act? because it's not in the interests of the most powerful. for example, the koch brother with their petrochemical industry. now, how do they convince us that we should do things that are bad for the middle class

things that are bad for the environment? right now the language is mainly race though it's also supposedly disrespect for christianity or people coming to get your guns people coming to get your bullets, gay marriage, all of these sort of cultural or politics are being used as wedge issues to get people to focus on the wrong thing. but you're absolutely right. at the end of the day this is about power and about how power manipulates the rest of us. >> host: professor in your opinion, how has president obama done with regard to addressing the issue of racism and race? >> guest: i am really sorry to have to say i don't think he has done a very good job at all. i think he had an incredible opportunity when he was first inaugurated in 2008 to start a new narrative about america to say for the last 50 years race has been used to divide us. gender religion, homosexuality, all been used to divide us. we need to go back to the new

deal idea ideal in which we're in this together and build a society on shared prosperity and refuse to be divided. instead of saying that, he actually adopted some of the conservative frames. he started to talk about how government was the problem and how we needed tax cuts and he abandoned this sort of narrative about how we really are one people with one dream and because he abandoned that. that allowed conservatives to come roaring back and say we're not one people. you need to fear this black president, fear black and brown criminals, fear women, because he didn't seize the opportunity to lead, and now it is harder and harder still. we have emerged from the crisis. obama has been painted as this socialist. he has been painted as this pair gone of left-wing radicalism when in fact he has been if anything centrist to right and makes it that much heard are for the rest of us to say no, we

know how to solve the current economic problems in the country. we know how to address global warming. we can do these great things. once we realize that we are a great people because we're hard working, we believe in helping each other and we're tolerant. that's the leadership we snead. >> host: steve texas. you're on booktv with ian haney lopez. >> caller: i just want to say, i agree with you 100%. i live in mid-texas where quite essentially they've proven -- politics have proven beyond the shade dough of a doubt that integration doesn't work. at least not in texas. the rope because of that is because of the money and the politics that go hand in hand with it, which in my opinion is extremely sad. what i would like to know, if you're in a position to do something positive about it, what you do? >> guest: i'm a fervent believer

in integration. i really believe we need integrate, but i think we can't integrate in the way that we have tried over the last 30 or 40 years. we have given lip service to the importance of integration. but all that has meant is allowing a few minorities access to some jobs some neighborhoods, some golf clubs, some institution of higher learning without reforming the institutions themselves. we as a society need to grapple with how deeply race has poisoned us has poisoned our attitudes toward each other, has poisoned our structure. think about the kids on the oklahoma bus? that is racism but that's the tip of the iceberg. these kids have internalized these mise messages of disrespect dehumanization0. violent. they were not only chanting the n-word they were laverring and joking about lynching. if we're going to have integration as a successful proven to building an

egalitarian society weeks in a version of integration that says we're going to include minorities and reform structures so the structures themselves grapple with and begin to dismantle these deep-seated lives about inferiority. >> host: professor lopez something you touched on the panel and also robert putnam's new book touches on this as well, the segregation of education. >> guest: absolutely. absolutely... rights movement had as its vision integration. why? because the civil rights movement felt if we were integrated, we could get to know each other. if we were integrate it we could overcome stereotypes. if we were integrated, we would begin to realize that we had a shared faith in this society. that sort of integration was fought tooth and nail. we didn't manage to achieve it. now we live in a highly segregated society and we should be clear. the most segregated people in the united states now are

whites. and not just any whites. middle class and upper middle class and wealthy whites are the most segregated people in the united states today. and what does that mean? it means they don't recognize very often the shared humanity with people who don't look like them who don't come from the same class as them, don't speak the same language as them and that has made them susceptible to the politics that tell them, fear the brown and black. segregation is part of what is destroying this country. and i want to emphasize this. we offer talk about segregation as if it's bad for minorities and it is. it's a tragedy. but it's bad for a whites as well. because it's what allows politicians to continually stoke racial fears. >> host: richard, ohio, please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: 50 years ago, a long time ago i spent a new year's

eve at a community action function that was really the vanguard of trying to -- it was moving this country forward to an integrated society. and there was so much progress all around us at the time that i began to think that really, we were on the verge of solving these problems. this was reinforced that after vietnam there was quite a lot of asian immigration in the neighborhood i lived in, and many times in the evening, looking out in a very middle class neighborhood. it looked like the old coca-cola commercial. but the decades have moved on this really turned out not be the threshold of the solution. and in fact i think there's been some degree of regression. and i -- >> guest: i think you're absolutely right.

>> caller: it's always puzzled me why this happened. i don't think that some of your interpretation of current modern history is really sole and complete explanation, and before i back away and listen to you, as a historical note, with the -- with relationship to the corporations the first corporation that was established in the united states was part of the union pacific railroad. and it was called credit oba cull lay corporation that the union pacific acquired so they could have the advantages of the legal aspects of corporate limited liability. >> guest: right. >> host: richard, thank you, sir. >> guest: i thinko your story about integration is actually really helpful. we made as a society a really strong concerted push to integrate, really start neglect mid to late 1960s.

brown versus board of education, the decision that says segregation is inherently unequal, that is 19534. we didn't really try to integrate until the mid-1960s. by 1968 richard nixon is elected. by 1970 at the realizes he can win votes by scaring whites by talking about integration. so the talks about slowing integration in the south, starts campaigning against forced busing. was the issue busing putting school children on buss? no. people have been putting school children on buses constantly. the issue was the integration the busing was designed to achieve. in the 1970s conservatives started to square white. s. what do liberal does? er we're losing and we're going to back away. so both factions-both sorts of sets of leaders decide basically in the early 1970s they'll stop promoting integration.

some communities kept trying to make the effort. i think in particular of seattle and louisville, but in 2007, the supreme court 5-4 with a -- with these conservative appointees, said even when communities want to pursue integration, they can't do so through race conscious means. so that sort of politics of racial fear that has wrecked the middle class it has also guaranteed that we remain and are increasingly a segregated society. >> host: booktv is on location in tucson arizona. this is the seventh annual tucson philosophy of books, held on the campus of university of arizona. so if you're in the area, you. come down. great crowd, great weather. we're in the gallagher theater in the student union and we're talking with professor ian haney lopez who just participated in a panel on race and politics. next up for him is kevin in

irvington, new york. >> caller: mahalo, professor. i was reading an interesting op-ed we matthew high schoolie in the times time today and all about the greek system, and everybody knows the deprivation of the greek system. they're not reading the classics. what do you think you can do on a campus like berkeley to totally reform that system? and what part does the university play in that? or do they have in making that happen? >> guest: so, what i want to say about universities is they play an incredible role in fostering critical thinking and in fostering social engagement across divisive lines. why is this relevant? if you listen to the panel conversation, we need a

citizenry, a electoral body that it thinking critically about who we are as a country. what have we achieved? what's the basis of our greatness? what are our interrupted dreams? what do we still need to work on? so many are rooted in illegitimate social hierarchy. we need people people to get to know people across the divisive lines. that's the way universities lead. to the extent they have a greek system, the greek system should be part of this project of educating people but also of breaking down these lines of division and i think that was one of the tragedies of the oklahoma event. rather than the greek system in a university breaking down unwarranted social divisions that are socially and democratically destructive, they were building them up and they were laughing and joking and partying essentially validating and legitimatizing the very social devices that universities should be breaking down.

>> host: just so happens our next call comes from oklahoma. this is bob on the line. bob, where in oklahoma are you? >> caller: thank you. thank you. important. mr. lopez, i'd like you to you specifically address how the policy of cannabis prohibition since 1937 has pretty much destroyed american farming and divided the country in racial ways, it's divided the country -- divided the white people from one another in terms of family structure friendships, how we go about looking at our work and careers. when we know what we know about the scientific legitimacy of such a crop -- >> host: all right bob. i think we got your point. we'll have professor lopez respond. bob, can you give us a local perspective of what happened the university of oklahoma?

>> caller: the local perspective on the university of oklahoma? i would say it's kind of tied into these old fashioned points of view about how society should be run. for instance, what i'm talking about. and how it's divided us from each other. i doubt if you'd see president boren addressing the industrial hemp ias a legitimate concern for our -- >> host: all right. we got your point, professor lopez, is legalization of marijuana a racial issue? >> guest: surprisingly, i think it is but it really takes us to this other dynamic. what has been happening in criminal law over the last 50 years? in 1970 the united states as a whole had 200,000 people in prison. today we have 2.3 million. we have five% of the world's population and 25% of the prisoners in the entire world, right here in the united states. why? part of the answer a very large

part of the answer is, the beginning of the 1970s politicians started telling white voters you need to worry about criminals and resent government for not cracking down hard enough on criminals. and in 1992, bill clinton as a democratic picked up on the same language, and so for the last 50 years, republicans and democrats have been competing to show who is tougher on crime, and the result has been a war on crime that has built up our prison population, built up our police forces militarize our police forts, and one of the prime ways this has happened is through the disproportionate enforment of drug laws. so many of the prisoners are there because of drug law violations. those laws have been enforced disproportionalitily. a vast proportion of the prisoners there, for marijuana violations, are african-americans. when whites know that i marijuana use between blacks and white is more or less the same.

and congress made a distinction between powder cocaine and black cocaine, powder cocaine more associatinged we white communities and crack cocaine with blacks, for the same amount of each drug, the sentence was 100 times longer for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine. so this buildup of a sort of a racialized system of mass incarceration is deeply rooted in drug laws that badly, badly need to be reformed including i believe through decriminalization of marijuana. >> host: how do you think president boren did at the university of oklahoma his response? >> guest: i think he did really well. i'm very proud of him for stepping in quickly, for stepping in forcefully. die believe that sort of behavior -- it's not just chanting the n-word it's channing the n-word and connecting it to lynching. this is a level of

dehumanization, of violence, that really can't be tolerated, that poisons the academic environment and that i think is a real threat to people's ability to learn and people's ability to then contribute to society, and i think that in some sense president boren understood this was a moment for learning not just for oklahoma but for the university -- but for the state and the country as a whole. we have a lot of work to do in terms of rooting out racism but we should be clear, the chanting of those songs on a school bus that wasn't the sum total of racism in our society. that's theof the iceberg so hopefully this this will turn into an opportunity for a real engaged national dialogue on race, howl it's hurting minorities and skewing our electoral system and hurting the middle class as a whole. >> host: there seems to be a nascent left-right coalition on

prison reform and drug law reform. >> guest: so, very welcome to see a sort of a new effort to reform drug laws. the 100 to 1 disparate has been reduced, down to 18 to 1 still egregious but an improvement. also you see some republicans some conservative politicians spending out on prison reforge very welcome. this in some sense heralds a diminishment of dog whistling around crime. that is the good news. the bad news is that the dog whistling around crime has easily been replaced with dog whistling around undocumented immigrants on the southern border. i expect that between 2014 and 2016 we're going to see a big upsurge in how much conservatives are dog whistling or trying to create racial panic around undocumented immigrants. at the same time i think post 9/11 we have also seen the way in which fear and anxious site

about muslims has increased across the country. so yes on one level, i think crime as a major dog whistle frame is fading but on another, i think it's easily been replaced by rhetoric that warns people about muslims and about undocumented immigrants. >> host: peggi is in lahaina. >> guest: right on. >> host: hawai'i hi peg good. >> hello. >> we're listening. >> caller: i'm so excited to call because i went to the university of arizona. i'm glad you're there. and i went to school in -- well, let me start gem itch was born in south america, venezuela. i went to school in mexico city and the university of arizona mitchell father was in the army. we traveled and lived different places, and of course i live in lahaina, which we all love because of all the races we all get along so well and i also want to thank your parents for

raising you as a rational, intelligent person. i'm just so proud even hearing you speak. i've never met you but my husband and i are having breakfast and we're going this is too exciting to hear somebody who is really a rational person, and my think is that i think the supreme court has really hurt our country terribly and -- but i also feel that the media is not covering things anymore. the today show is nothing but entertainment. cnn, i don't know who owns cnn now. but it's just like in the media, even the salem walk was -- and obama's speech was not covered that much the next day and i was -- >> host: peggy, i apologize, we're out of time so we'll gate response from professor lopez. >> guest: a quick response. "the new york times" started a race beat that had one journalist. they kept it for less than a year and then ended it. that's ludicrous.

the media -- i think has a duty to substantial ex-seriously engage with race and the only way to do so is to have journalists who are specialists talking about how race is playing out in our society. what happened with the media is it budget into this idea that if you talk about race you're part of the problem. no. talking about race being serious about the divisions, the threat it pose's our society and the way we all progress when we overcome these divisions, that is what we all need to embrace. that's walt we need to recognize and push media to recognize it has a role too in seriously engaging race in order to help create a racial egalitarian society in which we all work together for the betterment of everybody. >> host: dog whistle politics is the name of the book. how coded racial appeals have re-invented racism and wrecked the middle class. uc berkeley law professor, ian haney lopez author. thank you for being on booktv.

>> if appreciate the opportunity to talk to y'all. >> booktv is live, this is the tucson book festival. we have several hours left in our coverage today and then we'll be here again tomorrow. several call-ins coming up in just a minute you'll hear m.i.t. professor alan lightning talking about "the accidental universe." after that professor lightman will be joining us here again for a call-in program. and we'll be talking to the found dean of the law school at uc irvine and the buys can the case against the supreme court an historian gwen will be with us to talk about the civil war and stonewall jackson. all this, many more panels follow us on twitter,@book tv to get updates or find the full schedule at book of.org. >> good morning. my name is jim cornell.

i'm the president of the international science writer association and a member of the science book committee of this the seventh annual tucson festival of books and i welcome you all here this morning. this morning's presentation the accidental universe is sponsored by cox communication and by the u of a wildcat corps, part of americorp. i you want to become a friend of the fifth festival your tax deductible contributions can help us make this a free event for all the anymore so-arizona and contribute on the literacy programs in this part of the state. be sure to pick up -- you can find information about the friends, how to become a friend online, or you can go to an information booth on the mall. the mall will also be the site for book-signing but our author today. just outside the front door here. you take a right as you go out to the mall the university of

arizona book store signing area and book sell are area. if you have not yet picked up copies of the author's book you get them at the book store and bring them to the signing area. indeed you'll have a little extra time today because this program is being broadcast by c-span. we have an interview with the author immediately after our session here so he will be delayed by about half hour, but he will show up on the mall at 1:00, and you'll have plenty of time to talk with him out there at that time. let me remind you that this session and all the others are being broadcast on c-span2. members of the audience may often sometimes appear on screen so if you don't want anyone to know where you are today this is a good time to leave. [laughter] >> also, out of respect to our television audience and not to mention the speaker, the moderate and people sitting next to you, please turn off your

cell phones and any gaming devices you brought with you. i hope you will have time for questions at the end of the session. there will be mics in the aisles. please line up behind the mics and we'll try to take as many questions as we can, which means be short succinct and clear. i'm very pleased to introduce today's speaker, dr. alan likeman, long-time friend and one-time fellow staff member at the harvard smithsonian center for astro physics. alan is both a theoretical physicist and a writer, a most unusual combination, which i reflected by his dual faculty appointments in both science and humanities at m.i.t. in cambridge. the author of six novels including the international best seller einstein's dreams and the diagnosis, a national book award finalist, also published

several books on science and two collections of essays on the.complex interaction between science and society. the subject of today's session "the accidental universe" is just such a collection ofes says exploring how our vision of the cosmos has been shaped as much by human imagination as by new imaging technology. es the essays originally appeared in scientific journals. harvard magazine 2012 issue, and the title issue, also period first in harpers and what chosen by "the new york times" as the best essay of the year in any genre. -- reminiscent of the way 18th 19th century scientists often communicated the results of their research directly to the public through books and periodicals, and like

the work of those authors, his if's essays are marked by miracle prose that transcends the bound science and scientific literature to reboth the beauty and mystery of the natural worlded and how the strangeness and weirdness enhances our humanity. with that i'd like to turn it over to alan. welcome. [applause] >> thank you. i'm very happy to be here at the tucson festival of books. it's my first trip here, and delighted to have been invited, and very happy to have been introduced by jim cornell, who has, as he said has been friends of mine for at least a billion years. since we were talking cosmic terms here. so, as jim said "the accidental universe" is a collection of essays that explore how

developments in modern science have affected our understand offing ourselves and our place in the cosmos. and i'm going to talk about the title essay, the accidental universe, and then read you a little bit from one of the other essays. until very recently, scientist believed that almost all aspects of the physical universe could be explained as necessary consequences of a small number of fundamental laws and what is a fundamental law? one example is einstein's principle of relativity, which states there is no such thing as absolute rest or absolute motion. that only relative motion has meaning. and from that fundamental principle or fundamental law

einstein derived and quantitative detail his theory of time and space. we discover the fundamental laws of nature by experiments and by inspired guesses but ultimately, of course, they have to agree with experiments. from a small number of fundamental laws we have been able to calculate and quantitative detail such things as the orbits of planets, the color of the sky the size of raindrops, and many other physical phenomena and until recently we believed that given a small number of fundamental laws that only one self-consistent universe was possible. our universe. like a crossword puzzle that has only one solution.

very recently we have learned that this belief is probably wrong. starting with the same fundamental laws it appears that there are a huge number of different universes possible with very different properties. some universes might have three dimensions, like ours, some might have seven dimensions or 23 dimensions. some might have complex molecules like hemogloben and dna, and others might have only subatomic particles. some universes might have planets and stars and others might not. some universes might have life, living forms and others might be devoid of life. it appears our particular universe is just an accident one among many universes, a

random throw of the dice. this collection of all possible universes we call the multiverse, and i'm sure some of you have heard that phrase before. the multiverse. the idea of the multiverse which has been begrudgingly accepted by many scientists is disturbing to scientists and are and especially disturbing to theoretical physicists. theoretical physicists want to be able to explain all physical phenomena as necessary consequences of a mall number of fundamental principles. you start with a few fundamental laws and only one outcome is possible. that has been the historical mission and belief of theoretical physicists. and finding out that that is no

longer true, that some important aspects of our universe must be accepted as incal clue -- incalculable accidents is very disturbing and let me give you an analogy. you go into a shoe store to buy shoes and find out that a size 9 fits you. and you also find out that a size 11 fits you equally well, and a size 13 fits you equally well. it's sort of like that. [laughter] >> well, so, why has our view changed recently? well, for two reasons. one is to -- we have invoked the multiverse to explain a few odd

features of our universe andry tall talk about that more in a moment. and also there are actually some theories and modern physics that predict the multiverse predict these many different universes that exist in addition to ours. back in the 1960s, physicist first noticed that there were certain parameters of our universe that appeared to be finely tuned to allow the existence of life. if these parameters were a little bit larger or a little bit smaller than they actually are, that life could not have emerged in our universe. and let me give you a couple of examples. one is the strength of the nuclear force. the nuclear force is the force that holds subatomic particles together at the centers of

atoms. if the nuclear force were a little bit larger than it actually is, then all of the hydrogen in the early universe would have fused together to make helium. there would be no hydrogen left in our universe. and with no hydrogen you don't have water. even though biologists are not sure what conditions are necessary for life, especially on other planets, we think that water is necessary. on the other hand, if the nuclear force were a little weaker than it actually is, you couldn't form complex atoms like carbon in silicon and oxygen anything higher than hydrogen. and we certainly believe that you need complex atoms to form all of the chains and arrangements that you need to form the structureses that go into life. so that's one example. the nuclear force appears to lie

within narrow range to allow life. another example, and an even more striking example, is in the discovery of dark energy. about in the late 1990s astronomers discovered that the universe is actually accelerating, that the galaxies are not only moving away from each other but they're motiving away from each other at increasing speed like someone put their foot a cosmic excel accelerator pedal and that is caused by an antigravitational type force which in term -- in turn is caused by some energy. we know the energy is there. we can't see it directly. we can measure its effects and we call it dark energy. it's causing the acceleration of the universe causing the universe to expand faster and faster as time goes on. astronomers have been able to

measure the amount of dark energy in the universe by seeing how fast the universe was expanding at different times in the past. and that value is around 100 millionth of -- purr cubic centimeter. you don't have to know what an urg is at all or the number, but the point is it has been measured and it's a particular value. if the dark energy were just a little bit larger than it actually is, then the universe would expand so rapidly that matter would not be able to clump together to form stars planets, galaxies. structures. on the other hand, i the dark energy were just a little bit smaller than it actually is then the universe would have recollapsed before there was time to make complex atoms.

the fundamental lauds of -- laws office six allow the dark energy to be very, very gig and very very small and yell its actual value in our universe is within a very narrow range to allow the emergence, creation of complex molecules, and the emergence of life. so the great question is why? why are these parameters like the strength of the nuclear force and the amount of dark energy -- and there are many others -- why are they in a narrow training allow the emergence of life. why is that? well one explanation is intelligent design. maybe the universe was created by some intelligence let's call

it god any intelligence and that intelligence wanted for some reason our universe to have life and so when that intelligence designed the universe adjusted these parameters so that they would lie within the narrow training allow complex molecules to form and life to form. but the argument of intelligent design does not appeal most scientists. the other possible explanation to this fine-tuning is the multiverse. suppose that there are lots of different universes out there with very different properties some with nuclear forces much stronger than in our universe some with nuclear forces much weaker, some with values of the dark energy much higher, some with dark energy much smaller.

a wide range of different possibilities. some of these universes would be dead lifeless hulks of matter. some would allow the formation of complex atoms and molecules and life. most of the universes in the multiverse would not allow the emergence of life. most would have parameters that lie outside of the narrow training allow the emergence of life. that doesn't matter because we happen to live in a universe where the parameters do live in that narrow range, otherwise we wouldn't be here to discuss it. one analogy to this line of argument is suppose you began wondering why are the conditions on earth so favorable for the emergence of life? we have oxygen to breathe here.

we have water. we have a very nice temperature so that water is not a solid and it's not a gas it can exist in liquid form. so, why is that? you might think well somebody -- of course the earth is just the right distance from the sun to make the temperature right to allow liquid water, and you might say somebody must have designed the earth, put it at the right distance from the sun, et cetera, et cetera, to allow the formation of life here. but then we look out and we see there are other planets in our solar system none of which have life as we know. they don't have the same conditions on earth. and our rain -- uranus has temperature at minus 37 degrees. venus has rain that sulfuric

acid you. cant have life on that planet, either0. so the explanation why the conditions are so favorable on earth is simply it's an accident there are many other planets where conditions north favorable for life to emerge. planets ate different distances from the sun we happen to be on planet that is the right distance from the sun, that has other properties to allow the emergence of life and that's why we're here to talk about it. so that explanation is very similar explanation why the multiverse answer solve this problem of the fine-tune offering the universe. the multiverse explanation, of course does not require an intelligent designer. however, there's a tradeoff because the historic mission of physics to explain all

properties of the universe as necessary consequences of a few fundamental principles, that historic mission is a beautiful pipe dream. its futile. in the multiverse idea there are many, many different universes with many different properties, starting from the same fundamental laws of physics so we're just an accident. our universe is what it is because we are here. let me give another analogy. suppose that there is a group of intelligent fish, and one day they begin wondering, why is it that our world is water? isn't that wonderful? we know that we couldn't survive without water. why is that? and a few of the theoretical physicist fish -- [laughter]

-- begin calculating -- i don't know what they're calculating with -- [laughter] -- they began calculating and they try to prove why the world has to be filled with water. why that is the only possibility, why that's a necessary consequence of the laws of nature. and they work on it and they work on it and work on it and just can't quite prove that the world must be water. and then a wise and old fish says well, maybe not all worlds are filled with water. maybe there's dryland -- dry land somewhere and we just happen to live in a world that has water, because otherwise we wouldn't be here. other worldeds with the dry land. so that's an analogy to the multiverse situation. so let me now say a few words about some of the modern theories of physics that predict

the mulledty verse, and one is string their rhythm strength theory, which is -- string theory which is the -- i think the first string theory was in the 1960s and has been modified a lot since then. string theory proposes the basic constituents of matter are not subatomic part killed but tiny ultra small, one dimensional lines of energy, like string. these strings of energy vibrate and the different vibrations, like violation -- vibrations of a violin spring, correspondent to different notes but in this time they correspond to forces. string theory requires that these tiny vibrating strings of energy have to exist in a world of ten dimensions, seven more dimensions than what we see around us here.

we don't see these extra dimensions, the other seven because they're curled up in ultra tiny loops, the same way if you're looking at a garden hose from a few hundred feet it looks like a line because you can't see the thickness of the hose. you just see a straight line. it turns out that there are a vast number of ways that these additional seven dimensions can be folded up to produce to very small size to produce what we see as only three dimensions and each folding corresponds to a different universe with different fundamental parameters, different basic parameters, different strengths of the nuclear force, different values dark energy and so on. so the strength theory predicts many different universes resulting from different fold office the extra dimensions. the other theory that predicts

the multiverse is called internal inflation. the inflationary universe model holds that in the very early universe, when it was less than a trillionth of a second old the universe ban expanding very, very rapidly exponentially fast and then resumed the leisurely expansion of the standard big bang model. and that exponential expansion was caused by something like dark energy but the dark energy had a different value at each point in space and each of those points in space began expanding exponentially, producing a new universe with different physical properties different parameters. some aspects of the inflationary universe model have been confirmed by experiments so i would say that most physicists now accept it as a standard part

of cosmology. so let's go back to the intel intent fish for a moment. -- intelligent fish for a moment. i should mention that neither the inflationary universe model nor strength theory has -- string theory has been proven with the same certainty that say, relativity theory is proven or quantum physics is proven. but the multiverse explanation seems to be the explanation that most scientists accept for the fine-tuning problem i mentioned earlier. let's go back to the intelligent fish. the wisenned old fish have conjectured that there are many other worlds, some with water, and some with dry land. they live in a world with water because otherwise they couldn't exist. some of the fish grudgingly

accept this explanation, some are relieved some are despondent because their life's work of trying to prove that their world had to be water is futile. some of the fish are deeply disturbed because there's no way that the conjecture can be proven. they live in the ocean, and they have no way of proving for sure that dry land exists. they can't live on dry land. and that uncertainty is what disturbs physicists today. not only what must we accept that certain basic parameters of the universe are accidents, that we can't calculate, that just have come from a roll of the dice. not only must we accept that but we also must believe in a

vast number of other universes out there, which are unobservable. there's no way to know whether they exist. certainly no why in the imaginable future. so we must believe in what we cannot prove. we must believe that these other universes exist on faith. does that sound familiar? [laughter] >> we must take their existence as a matter of faith. and that is the delicious irony that modern science has found itself in. i wanted to read a little bit from one of the otheres says in the book -- other essays in the book. for all the writers here you know the essay is a delicate

literary form in which the way you say something is as important as what you say. so it's very hard to summarize an essay. so i'm going to just read portions of one of thees says and the book. the tilele is the temporary university. last august my oldest daughter got married. ...

for. radiant in her white dress, a white doll yet in her hair, my daughter asked to hold my hand as we walked down the aisle. it was the perfect picture of utter joy and a airtran judaism wanted my daughter back as she was at age 10 or age 20. as we move together toward the lovely arch that would swallow us all, other scenes flashed through my mind. my daughter in first grade holding a starfish as big as herself, her smile missing a tooth, my daughter on the back of her bicycle as we rode to a river to drop zone in the water. my daughter telling me the day after she had her first period.

now she was 30. i could see lines in her face. i don't know why we long so for permanence. why the fleeting nature of things so disturbs us. we cleaned to the old wallet long after it has fallen apart. week visit and revisit the old neighborhood where we grew up searching for the remembered grove of trees and eagles fans. we treasure our old photographs. in our churches and synagogues and mosques we prayed to the everlasting and eternal. in every nook and cranny nature is screaming at the top of her limbs that nothing lasts that is all passing away. all that we see around us including our own bodies is shifting and evaporates in and one day will be gone. where are the 1 billion people

who lived and breathed in the year 1800, just two short centuries ago. the evidence seems overly clear. in the summer months, mayfly's dropped by the billions within 24 hours of birth, drone and its parish in two week, leaves bloom and will leaving dead paper restocks, forests burn down leaving and replenish themselves and burn down again. ancient stone temples and spires flake in the salty air fracturing in fragments, dwindling to spindly nubs in the venture will be dissolving into nothing. coast lines be road and crumble. glazier's slowly but surely climb down the land. once the continents were pulling. once the air was ammonia and methane. in the future it will be

something else. the son is as fleeting as nuclear fuel. look at our own bodies. in the middle years and beyond skin sags and cracks eyesight fades hearing diminishes, bones shrink and turn brittle. physicists call it the second law of thermodynamics. it is also called the arrow of time. oblivious to our human yearnings for permanence the universe is relentlessly wearing down, falling apart driving itself towards a condition of maximum disorder. is a question of probabilities. you start from a situation of improbable quarter like that deck of cards perfectly arranged to number and suit or a solar system with several planets

orbiting nicely around a central star. then you drop a deck of cards on the floor over and over again, let other stars randomly go by your solar system, with their gravity, the cards become a shambles, the planets get picked off and go aimlessly wandering through space. border has yielded to disorder. repeated patterns have yielded to change. in the end you cannot defeat the odds. you might beat the house for a while but the universe has an infinite supply of time and can outlast any player. what about our sun and other stars? shakespeare's caesar says to caxias, quote that i am constant as the no. star whose true fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the

firmament. but caesar was not up on modern astrophysics or the second law of thermodynamics. the north star and all stars including our son are consuming their nuclear fuel after which they will fade into cold embers floating in space or blow out in a massive explosion. buddhists have long been aware of the evanescent nature of the world. in permanence, they call it. in buddhism is one of the three signs of existence, the other being suffering and non selfhood. according to the buddhist scriptures win the buddha passed away the king deity added the

following:quote in permanent are all component things, they are prized and cease, that is their nature. a come into being and passed away. we should not attach to the world's say the buddhists, to things in the world because all things are temporary and they will soon pass away. all suffering, say the buddhists comes from the attachment. if i could only detached from my daughter may be i would feel better. to my mind is one of the profound contradictions of human existence that we long for immortality. indeed fervently believe that something must be unchanging and permanent when all the evidence and nature argues against that. either i and delusional or

nature is in complete. either i am being emotional end vein in my wish for eternal life for myself and my daughter or there is some realm of immortality that exists outside of nature. as a false alternative, the need to have a talk with myself and get over it. after all, there are other things that i yearn for that are either not true or not good for my health. the human mind has a famous ability to create its own reality. if the second alternative is right then it is nature that has been found wanting. despite all the richness of the physical world, the majestic architecture of adams, the rhythm of the tides, the luminescence of the galaxies nature is missing something even more exquisite and grand, some immortal substance which lies

hidden from view. suggs -- such explicit stuff could not be made from matter because all matter is slave to the second law of thermodynamics. perhaps this immortal fame we wish for exists beyond time and space. perhaps it is what made the universe. of these two alternatives i am inclined to the first. i cannot believe that nature could be so of this. although there's much we don't understand about nature, the possibility that it is hiding that condition or substance so magnificent and so utterly unlike everything else seems too for postures to me to believe so i am delusional. my continual craving for e eternal youth and constancy, and i am being sentimental.

perhaps with proper training of my unruly mind and my unruly emotions i could refrain from wanting things that cannot be. perhaps i could accept that in a few short years my adams will be scattered in wind and soil, of my mind and thoughts on my pleasures and joys vanished. i can not accept that fate even though i believe it to be true. i can't force my mind to go to that dark place. suppose i ask a different question. against our wishes and hopes we are stuck with mortality, does mortality branch mortality and the grandeur all its own.

even though we struggle and howl against the brief flash of our lives might we find something majestic in that brevity. could there be a preciousness and value to existence stemming from the very fact of its temporary duration? i think of the night blooming cereus a plant that looks like a leathery weed, 364 days year but for one night each summer, its flower opens to reveal silky white petals which encircle yellow threads and another flower like a tiny sea anemone within the other flower. by morning the flower has shriveled. one night of the year as

delicate and fleeting as a knife in the universe. thank you. [applause] >> we have about 15 minutes time for questions if any of you have a question stepped in to the island come to the microphone and i will take you in order. one interesting personal comment. i have been shopping with my wife three years ago and men in the audience will understand i went to barnes and noble when she went shopping and was going through the magazines, among thought hot rods there was the o magazine an obscure literary journal, this essay was in it so i sat and read it and my wife

came back and said why are you looking so more rose? pondering my mortality in starbucks. the lady on my right over here. >> speak right into the microphone. >> i thought i would pose some questions as a former journalist. talking about dark energy, you were talking about dark energy and that the universe is accelerating to 2 anti gravitational forces. >> it acts like an anti gravitational force would gravity attracts and the force resulting from the dark energy is pushing apart. >> i had seen a special on television may be ten years, i think it was a lady harvard professor. what she posed was perhaps that

there was a stronger gravitational force in another universe we tend to think we have strong gravitational force when the truth of the matter, perhaps truth of the matter is perhaps we don't and they were pulling up in that. >> that is one of the conjectures that some of the other universes and higher dimensions exert gravitational effect on our universe. it is not anything we are going to approve. it is conjectural like the whole multiverse conjecture. that is more conjectural because it deals with very specifics of the universes where the general

multiverse idea is there are other universes with different properties. the harvard lady physicists. of very smart physicist. >> let's go to the left here. >> here we are at a book festival. are you writing a new book? >> a new book just came out. >> a question. >> i am always fiddling around with something. >> my question. i read the accidental universe. beautiful book. but there's one part i want to

challenge you on. use said it again today that the universe is the way it is because we are here and i feel it is the other way. we are here because the universe is the way it is. i wonder why you phrased it -- >> i like your phrasing better. >> it made more sense. >> thank you so much. >> we are here because the universe is the way it is. >> the gentleman stepped up already. >> i am not familiar with your views about the nature of the big bang. it is fascinating to me we can talk about what must have happened in a trillion of a second after the big bang. but there is this in movable blockage and physicists are kind of in a quandary about that,

isn't that right? perhaps the multiverse 11 -- they don't really know what to do about the big bang. >> we will never know what happened before the beginning but we have theories that say that there was a quantum space of some kind with lots of potential universes and just as we can reproduce in a laboratory matter out of energy, we know it can be done, you can produce a whole universe out of nothing at a very tiny scale and that universe began expanding and got big enough to produce stars and galaxies and so on so we do have

a hypothesis about what happened very near the beginning. i should stay that there is a lot of experimental evidence to support the general big bang theory going back to tiny fractions of a second after t = zero. we have a lot of experimental confirmation about that. the big bang model is really much more than hypothesis. is really a pretty well supported explanation of the universe. >> i knew it was supported but didn't know if there was an explanation. >> thank you for the question. >> i was interested in your idea, what you call your delicious irony between the and no ability of the religious belief on the one hand and the and no abilitys of the multi

firsthand string theory but that is really cutting it as close as it should be? after all the idea of string theory and the multiverse is supported by a complex body of mathematics and scientific rationalism whereas religion asks you to believe and take the leap of faith as it were. the distinction to be is a very profound one. i was wondering if you could address that. >> i agree science and religion are not the same activities by a long shot. the kinds of knowledge we have in science that different from the kind of knowledge, the way we arrive at knowledge i wasn't trying to draw a 1:1 correspondence. i was saying there is an irony that we have to take something as a matter of faith in science

but the argument of intelligent design is an appealing to most scientists. i was trying that comparison. i was not saying religion and science are the same kinds of knowledge in the same way of achieving knowledge. that is a whole discussion which we don't have time for right now but thank you for the question. >> i will settle for 2,000 years of life. i have faith in rakers while --r --ray kuzweil's vision. anyway download my brain? >> how big is your brain? >> not very big guy think. >> when you comment -- >> i think eventually we will be able to extract a lot of

information in the brain, yes. i think we will also sooner and that have computer chips that we can implant on our brain that will connect as directly to the internet so that you will have the enormous amount of information not just at your fingertips but the tips of your neurons. i think that will come about. i think that revolution will require us to understand how to store information, how information is stored in neurons that which point we will download brains. just wait a while. >> i was wondering, you were making fun of julius caesar but

i was wondering what you thought about people and hundred years from now how much they will make fun of the multiverse maybe they will have technology so rapid, wondering what you think of that, see what we think right now but maybe a hundred years from now it will seem stupid. >> that could well turn out to be the case. >> stay on this side. >> i wonder if there's speculation on what appears to be the foot writing the gas pedal of intelligent design with the turtle elements of yearning for but everything is temporary, to limit the eternal spark for creativity. some are created in the evil realm and wonder if temporary

nurses to confine evil to put limits on it. >> that is a very interesting point. the temporary nature of our universe really is fundamentally tied to the second law of thermodynamics which just says improbable situations become more and more probable when you start with an improbable border of arrangements. a deck of cards with all the numbers lined up, that is a very improbable arrangement. if you just shuffle the cards a lot you will get a more probable arrangement which is everything mixed together. that principle is so fundamentally is sort of like the principle of natural selection. it is almost automatic.

it doesn't need an intelligence to be involved in any way at all. maybe i am not -- >> why is this -- may be that is not something -- >> why does 2 plus 2 = 4. the fact that improbable things become more probable is as fundamental as 2 plus 2 equal 4. i guess i can't go any further than that. >> time for just two more. please, keep them short. so we can get the young lady here. >> i will be quick. it seems very bleak with the dark energy in our future of our universe and to top it off with the implant and a microchip in our brains, you see that as a positive point in the future?

>> great question. i don't necessarily see it as a positive development. i think there will be all whole new area of the law which deals with intellectual property. but i think technology by itself is neither good nor bad. i think it is how human beings use the technology that makes it good or bad. you could ask the same thing as the cellphone a good thing. it has -- it is used wisely in some cases and unwisely in others. it is as human beings that determine whether the technology is used for good or for ill. >> this will be the last question. >> not as much a question as a

statement. i have a problem with use of the term big bang. it was oil who used the word in just because he was completely against the idea of the expansion. and it was hubble who proved it through his telescope that the expansion of the universe is real and is now called hubbell's law and i would much prefer if scientists started using the accurate term for the expansion instead of using the best term, thank you. >> i want to thank multiverse one for an excellent presentation. [applause] >> and i want to thank the audience for supporting the festival and our authors. if you would like to interact some more with alan lightman he

will be appearing in the second session called a human perspective on the universe, together with carl devito, the main stage at the far end of the mall this afternoon at 4:00 p.m.. i invite you to join him there. i should also note someone set us up for this. alan lightman had a new book out within the last month called the screening room. is the memoir and it has been described by one critic as the suddenly fictionalize emotionally refined and reasonable description descriptive chronicle of his stirring family history, often confounding boyhood. a colorful jewish enclave in a segregated 20th century memphis. the novelist is more succinct and, for calling it screwball, heartfelt and true. i agree with that one. copies of this and other volumes by alan lightman will be

available outside the university of arizona books bore sighting area but remember we are going to have an interview with c-span2 live following this so alan lightman will be for his appearance by half an hour. see you at 1:00. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> you are watching booktv on c-span2. this is live coverage of the tucson book festival on the campus of the university of arizona. if you have been listening to alan lightman talking he is going to be joining us now on stage for a call in program. 202 is the area code if you want to talk to alan lightman 748-8200. for those in the east and central time zone 748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. we have several hours, several more author panels of live coverage. in half an hour or so the next panel is called narrative nonfiction. it is three historians who will be joining the panel talking about the civil war the boys on the boat which has been a runaway best seller this year

that is daniel james brown and hampton 5 in the kingdom of ice. those three historians will be on the panel together and afterwards f c gwynn who has written a book about stonewall jackson will join us for a call in to talk about the civil war. that is coming up. if you want to get updates for what they follow us on twitter at booktv is our twitter handle and you can go to our web site booktv.org to see the full schedule of 5 events. everything you are seeing today will air this evening at midnight eastern time which will be 9:00 p.m. eastern time out here in the west. now joining us is alan lightman. i want to ask, in "the accidental universe: the world you thought you knew" you have a chapter called the spiritual universe. my question is rather inarticulate but is religion real? >> it certainly is a real. there