had a project specifically to detect cancer before it becomes symptomatic. flying cars are certainly on the radar screen up in the air. implantable computers. that might sound icky, but it has a lot of interesting perspectives to people. one of the things we did with the book is to kind of outsource human memory into books where they're actually in many ways much better. to the point of putting our personal experiences entirely into a computer, possibly our own personality. maybe we're going to have a demo at some point where the computer runs sebastian. it's not as far -- maybe not unimaginable, but not as far off as we think it is. it's very doable. maybe i'll stop here. [laughter] i actually do believe in all these technologies we have only scratched the surface. almost everything interesting

hasn't been invented yet, and if you just have an imagination most of these things have strong technical solutionings. >> jaron, do you have a thought about the demo you would like to see? >> wow, sure. i mean i've also spent a lot of time starting crazy projects and what not. in my book i speculate about one where there's artificial glands that manufacture molecules within the body on an as-needed basis. and i actually set the narrative of it on the stanford campus with some kids who use these devices not as intended. and -- [laughter] and the point of that, of imagining that for me was to think about how the way it's brought out into the world economically can influence so much how the invention affects people, that these things can turn out well or badly and a lot of it is the context in which they're introduced. by the way, i don't believe your thing about making -- capturing

your personality, because i think you are a moving target, and the way you change yourself in response to that technology would undo any measurability of whether it had succeeded. >> just wait. [laughter] >> yeah well -- >> my personality not other people's -- [laughter] >> right. i believe you're only pretending that's so, but if you pretend it enough to make the demo seem to work you might make it so which is the great danger to you. [laughter] but at any rate, a couple of demos. you know, i remember a crazy thing. when i was like, 20 and we were making these virtual reality systems for the first time and that was scarily long ago, we're talking 35 years ago some of my friends were saying, boy if we ever have kids, we're going to slap those kids in virtual reality, and they're going to grow up in four dimensions, so they'll become the world's first mathematicians. my first child was 8 years ago and i looked at her coming out and said no, i'm not going to

do that to you. [laughter] but i still i've always been curious about trying to build up intuition and higher dimensions and other sorts of mathematical reasoning because i'm so interested in the math phobias and the difficulty that so many people have in this really crucial way of thinking. and a demo that just blasted through that and enhanced human intuition in math would be the thing that i would love to present. and that would be very engelbartian because he wanted us to expect more from ourselves. he wanted the intellects to become more and more capable and that would be such a golden example. >> well those answers opened up a lot of topics. as i understand it, there are microphones around that -- oh, yes. right there is one and right there is another. so if you have a question, raise your hand and a microphone will find you and we'll go from there. why don't we start over with the blue shirt. or over there. >> this is for mr. lanier.

about 35 years ago i think it was 1980, i took my wife to hear you speak on the fourth floor of an unfinished office building on san jose and first street. you talked about something called the data grab, and then you -- >> called the what? >> i think you called it the data globe. >> the data globe sure. >> you also talked about your views of the future. and if you look back then versus what you're doing now versus projecting forward, how would you compare? >> yeah. well so the data globe was our way of handling stuff in virtual worldses back then because -- worlds back then because we didn't have fast enough cameras. and the first globe was made by tom zimmerman, i should give him credit he's currently a researcher at ibm. and, by way our bread man for our head-mounted displays was eye phone, but eye and when apple came out with its

iphone, all the people in our world were confused for a year. [laughter] but anyway, the -- to answer your question, yeah. i'm working on an autobiography and i've within trying to reconcile my current view of the world with the one i had in my 20s in the '80s. and i was definitely -- i feel just as optimistic now as i did then, and i feel wild-eyed and enthusiastic, and i love working on technology as much as i ever did. but i also feel a sense of balance about it that i don't think i had at the time. i think i fell into the fallacy of utopian thinking. and anytime you start to believe that you're on a path to utopia, you're almost certainly going to shoot yourself in the foot. it's a guarantee. and i -- it's very very hard to outgrow utopian illusions. it's very painful. it's really growing up. and it was hard. i mean i mentioned before that i had thought that being aware of violence would reduce

violence and, in fact, it changes the nature of violence. i think there is actually less violence overall, but that violence that there is is, perhaps, more cruel and more cruelly focused and more personal. and there's, you know, it's -- the result is more complex, and it's more of a mixed bag than you might want. i, i still believe the world is getting better. i still believe people will pull through. but i also i also recognize how tough that's going to be, and i think we're going to go through a pretty tight squeeze. where i find kind of a difference with some of my fellows in silicon valley is there tends to be a belief in some people in the valley who are sort of in the ex-utopian community that everything will get better and better, and technology will solve all ills. i think actually we're going to go through some tight squeezes, there's going to be a lot of rough stuff. i think we're going to have a

real struggle to define ourselves in a humane and sweet way as we go through a lot of changes. i think there are going to be a lot of sort of deceptive and tricky technologies that we'll have to unravel. i think the interests of entrepreneurs and everyone else are not always aligned. i don't think that's automatic. sometimes they are. >> i might actually -- part of a group of people who would shoot themselves in the foot, because i'm actually much more positive. and what makes me positive about the situation in silicon valley is just extrapolate from history and look at what we've done in technology in the last, say, 300 years. from the time that almost everybody worked in farming, and the living conditions were horrible the average age was you'd be in the 30s when you died. there was no cure against many, many diseases and illnesses we can easily cure today. to today where we have more peace, a higher probability of dying a natural death more

longevity. even the bottom of the world has been lifted in terms of its living standards. it's uneven, admittedly. that's all been driven in part by technology. the globalization that we have, the interconnectedness. i come from a place in europe which had hundreds of years of ferocious wars, and all those disappeared because now all the countries are interacting all of a sudden and doing business each other. business each other. i think that's going to comet. i see no reason why all of a sudden things are different. now when we ask people how they feel about it, most people are on the negative side or on the balanced side because people aren't as optimistic as i usually am. and i think it's in part because there's a lot of uncertainty. what does it mean? what's going to happen? what does it mean if uber takes over? why is my life affected by in the? and i think that feeling almost of fear about what the future might bring gives people the

feeling of -- feeling worse but in reality it's better. this beautiful book about war and safety, and he found that century after century has become safer and safer and safer and safer and safer. including the 20th century with these two horrible world wars and stalin in russia was still safer than the 19th century. so perceptional realities and limited versions. >> so the way i the way i think this falls out is that technology is a necessary but insufficient resource for improving the human state of affairs. technology has -- it creates the wiggle ram for people to make a better society, but it doesn't itself do that. so i think a lot of the credit that technology -- so i agree with you in terms of the factual record. i think that things have been getting better. and i often find myself on the other side of that argument where some new age idiot is

telling me everyone used to be healthier before modern age medicine. oh my god. [laughter] and you can find hundreds of thousands of those people in marin county, very nearby. [laughter] it blows my mind that anybody can believe that. but at the same time, as technologists, we tend to take full credit for the improvement whereas, in fact, what happened is better technologies created the wiggle room within which people could decide to make a better society. so if we look at the improvements in public health, yes, vaccines understanding the importance of clean water, all these things are usual. but it was the societal structures to actually spread those around and make them happen that was also necessary. so technology is necessary but not sufficient to create improvement. and this is the thing i think we've forgotten. we have this idea that some abstract ramp of improvement whether it be technology or business competition can run on autopilot and will be aligned with human interests automatically, and it's a way of not taking responsibility for the very difficult political job

of creating a society that actually benefits from those things. and so i think we have to take the whole picture into account. i think, you know, we agree more than we disagree -- >> come on. [laughter] >> you feel we disagree more than we agree? >> i didn't want to take credit personally for this. [laughter] >> well, you know, there's another thing. there's a real problem that -- i mean, we talked on phone, and i said something about how we're so successful that in a way we live in this bubble, and it's hard to appreciate what it's like for a lot of people. and you said something like, well compared to larry or zuck or something we're not that successful, but we're successful. [laughter] >> it was a private phone conversation. [laughter] >> sorry. i found the transcript on the google server. [laughter] >> okay. i think we better move to the

next question over here. >> this is may lin. >> that's fine. go ahead. >> no i'm here in the middle higher up. >> okay. oh way up -- >> all right. >> hi. >> i chaired doug engelbart's planning committee from 2001 to 2004. i want to touch on something that henry said about the sort of the sense that doug had as being a failure because he had a 200-year vision. yes, he had the colloquium at stanford, but that was the unfinished revolution. and i just want to touch on that that he felt that we should have a vision of how technology could augment our humanity, and we still have to live up to that dream. and he fought to the last breath to get that message out. so he did feel he was failure. even though he had done so much, but because he looks to us to

gather in communities to harness technology for humanity. and that fight still goes on. so i'd like o'hare your comments -- to hear your comments as world thinkers and so on. when i went round with doug that message was very, very hard for people o'hare. to hear. you mean we're not good enough? we're the masters of the universe. but, yes, there's a 200-dream of what technology can do to augment our humanity. [applause] >> it was interesting to see your comment why he was failure. i hear two different things now and, of course, i never met him in person. you mentioned that he didn't get enough recognition. as a metric for failure. and maybe that was part of it. just said also that his urge to implement this amazing vision

and the slowness of society relative to his own life clock. on the recognition side i think we should never use the recognition we get as a measure of success. ever. i think it's a big mistake. if we do this you're going to be very inhibited and do very incremental things in life. the there -- the true innovators do things that are not recognized or even threatening to people, and they often receive negative feedback because they might disturb something. so recognition itself in my opinion, is plainly the wrong metric. as is money, in my opinion. the big question is for me always, how much do you affect people's a life to the better in the future. and in that case i think it's fair to say he was ahead of his time. he invented a whole bunch of things used every day today, you could even say the internet to some extent, computer graphics the interactive text editing and so on, all things we cherish

today and have massively influenced people. it might have been direct through his lineage, but he put intellectual thing out there that people picked up and rightfully credit him for to do the right thing. i would, i mean, if he was around today on this podium and say i was a failure, i'd say hey, we have a symposium in your honor. [laughter] the computer field knows exactly how amazing your contributions were. >> another story occurs to me that your comment brought up. one of my sort of weird illnesses is that i collect accusic musical instruments and feel compelled to learn to to play them, so i have lots and lots of instruments. an instrument forest wherever i live. and doug used to come over, and we both thought these were the best user interfaces that had come about. but the thing about them is each one of them took centuries to evolve. if you look at a modern clarinet

or a violin, it was something that co-evolved with a culture of playing it over a long time. in some cases it was awaiting many better metallurgy, but in a lot of cases it was just the refinement of the design really took that long and would still take that long. and so there's this notion that some things in technology can improve rapidly, the moore's law like things where you can say let's make this chip faster and more efficient, all that. that's great. but there's some things that just take their time. and this notion that maybe in 200 years we'll have interfaces that we use that are as good as a vie lip or a piano it's just -- a violin or a piano it's something that's so beguiling and i often try to dream of what those might be like. in a way those are for the future. i think by definition we can't see those things yet. we can't know them, and you have to have sort of a trust that that'll come about. i mean there's -- can you imagine us dictating to people 200 years from now, well, this

is the wonderful thing you will have done in great detail, and they'll a -- they'll say eh. in either case we need to leave some room for the future or we can't expect it to evolve to be better. >> okay. where's the microphone? okay you've got it. >> yes thank you. my question really goes back to an earlier point, and it's regarding the ethics and economics of augmentation. i find this to be a very critical theme in mr. lanier's books. one of the beauties of technology is that it sort of mediates our perception of reality. however, with increasing mediation, there's complexity and there's also danger that it's difficult to see the consequences of our actions because of this mediation. and this potentially could also

undermine our ability to choose and to have responsibility because of this thick layer of mediation. so based on this, do we see finish and i'd like to hear some discussion, is there a danger of with the march of technology that we really contribute to the further concentration of wealth and knowledge and power in the hands of the very few to the point where we have no longer have any consumers to buy our products? >> so the question really about technology of most recent developments changing the balance of distribution of wealth? yes, no? sorry. the effect of most recent technology developments in silicon valley on wealth on equity in different places of

the world? i mean certainly, we've witnessed a divergence of wealth in this country. and as someone puts it the middle class used to be a floor you would take the elevator and get there and stay there, now it's an escalator you have to keep running up but it's running in the opposite direction, so you have to keep running faster to even attain it. and it's a concerning development as a nation. the division between the people who have a chance and don't have a chance. and i think it's worldwide that has to be addressed, in my opinion because we are underutilizing our resources by giving some people enormous power and others no power at all. that's certainly the case. having said this, this goes hand in hand with the situation we also basic services are becoming more and more available for everybody. it's not that this leads to a really, i mean it leads to a really bad situation, but it's not quite as bad as it could be if for the poorest of the poor

it was worse and worse and worse and worse. and a long discussion about what the implications are. i'm a big big fan of the estate tax. i think this has a chance to reset dynasties. >> i'll applaud that. >> yeah, really important. [applause] i'm actually coming from europe where we're much more socialist than you guys are. you guys are. a little bit shocked how little is done for poor people many this country and -- in this country and people of low income, people of race, people of color and so on and how badly we manage ourselves in terms of a small number of people have a chance to get a great education. others don't. but i also hope that we can invent technologies to help that, right? so my own company works in the communication space. our objective is democratize education. we take the best education to the world and we're not the only one there's another company that does the same thing, and they're using technologies to leverage what used to be health behind stanford's walls and make it available.

responsibility absolutely, yes, we should think globally. we should think about people. because we have 7.2 billion of us. it's an amazing gift that we can turn into an amazing progress in the world. not everything is peachy, obviously. but to think about what could be used in silicon valley to really reec bytize the world. >> so i think i heard two different questions within your question. so the first one you were asking is about whether the world becomes more obscure to us because it's so mediated by technologies particularly technologies from other people. for instance, right now a lot of the news you read is selected bilal grit ms, and those algorithms are based on data that's often gamed by a bunch of people that are trying to manipulate it, and it becomes obscure, why you're reading what you're reading. and, you know going back to this question of empirically whether we're willing -- look if you had asked me in the '80s would it be possible once the internet is really, we

weren't calling it that yet but once everything was networked and people were sharing media and they were collaborating all over world would it be possible for climate change to get a foothold? i would have said, no, it'll be impossible because everyone will have access to evidence and everything will be clear. it turns out not only to be possible, but it can be possible in a really politically powerful way that has an impact. i thought that couldn't happen. i think the way out of that, the way to sort of help people not lose touch with reality when there's just so much technology everywhere and there's so many incentives to manipulate it is to make user interfaces that are as clear as possible so people can have as much access to expertise and understanding their information as possible. and i think we failed at that. i honestly do. i think that we have an information system now that's all about manipulation because it has perverse incentives. so there's -- the way journalism has been about click bait and being centralized around the top servers and all that kind of

stuff. you can read my books if you want to hear my argument on that. but -- and this is a beef i have with the artificial intelligence world, because if you say, oh, here's siri or cortana deciding what you should read or whatever algorithm it is, since we're social creatures, we tend to defer to them. but it creates this obscurity. if we're honest, what it is is it's some stupid algorithm that -- i mean, none of these algorithms are not that great yet. at the same time, we have to have some perspective and recognize it's still pretty crude. and what we should really be doing is visualizing for people what the algorithms are doing giving them access to understanding the mechanism as much as possible so they have an opportunity to understand their world better as doug would have expected them to. we should expect more from our people instead of saying, oh here we've automatically chosen these things. like the latest one from facebook is what things from your past you should remember. well, that's okay -- [laughter] i don't mind facebook offering

that service but i want people to look at the mechanism, see what the corpuses that's driving it play with it, understand it. and, you know, open source in itself doesn't do it. we need a new kind of computer science that visualizes and makes clear what algorithms do or else we can't use them intelligently. what could be more clear than that? so that's the answer to the mediation issue, i believe. more visualization or more explanation, less fantasy, you know? less manipulation. and then the second question about the power distribution, of course, is tremendously concerning. and here, you know, like in the personal computer era from the '70s into the early '90s before everything got networked well there was a really interesting thing that happened with personal computers which is like little shops like some dry cleaner or something. they'd buy a little, they'd buy, you know an apple ii or a mac or something or an early pc and they'd own the data. the data would be sitting there

on their disk, and it allowed them to have differential information in their own market which allowed them to be entrepreneur. and i'm convinced that the personal computer era did a lot to raise the middle class, because it gave so many people the ability to have unique information powers as small players in their market which is what capitalism's all about. when we've entered into this cloud era where it's one of our big companies that owns people's day and collates it, people no longer own their own data, and i believe that's been the mechanism by which people have entered the middle class, that's an issue that we can solve. we have to. what we're doing is not sustainable. >> one last question. i think we have time for. >> which way? >> me? my name is les earnest, and i was a friend of doug engelbart back in the day.

we used to exchange visits to each other's labs. was managing the stanford artificial intelligence lab. i admired his work, and the demo he gave was a good a very good presentation of the state of the art in interactive computing. however, i disagree about the appraisal of it. it was called the mother of all demos, i believe, by some reporters who didn't know the state of the art. there was one new idea introduced in the talk. it didn't work. the thing that got the most attention was the point and click interface using the mouse. the mouse was a less expensive way of pointing and clicking than the prior state of the art

which was so-called light guns and light pens. but it was not a new idea. the point and click graphical user interface had been around for 15 years at that point. it was introduced at mit on the whirlwind computer and later widely used in the air system which i helped design. but that was not a new idea. it was -- became popular especially after the introduction of the personal computer. but it was -- now the new idea that doug showed was the one-handed keyboard. didn't work out. it was dropped. and, of course, the mice are now

sort of fading being replaced by touch pads and the like. so while that was a very nice demo it's been somewhat blown up in perspective beyond what it really accomplished. so that -- i'm sorry, that's a dissenting view. >> yeah. well -- [laughter] there's a couple things i want to say about that. assessing the value of contributions in computer science can often be tricky because i would tend to agree that isolating a single contribution of doug's like -- i mean often he's introduced for the mouse. and i don't think that's the important thing he did. what he did is he did a holistic sensibility and demonstrated an overall approach to technology and a scenario for using it that

was fresh. and i think you're teasing it apart into elements. i agree with you on the points of history. i do want to say that if you were going to apply the same standard to the a.i. field a whole lot of famous achievements would fall into nothing really fast, because a lot of that's puffery. if you want to play that game, i think your own field would suffer pretty badly. [laughter] but i don't think that's -- that's not the important field of play. i mean i have to say something else. back in those days the stanford a.i. lab was such a charming, amazing, eccentric place back in the hills in this sort of weird decaying, ultramodern art building. i just loved it back then, it was so strange. anyways there's a lot to remember about that wonderful lab as well from that period. but i, you know, there's, there are levels of achievement that can't be described in terms of their atoms need to be described in terms of their molecules and doug was a

molecular innovator, and i'll absolutely defend him on those terms. [applause] >> okay. i think we're going to go with one more question, and that would be you. ..

i've always been so wrong in predicting this. it's amazing. i can tell you a couple things i would love to see happening. some things are obvious like the ownership society and personal belongings from the practice so you just push a button and your food will come out of the machine. in 20-years-old it is a method as today.

i believe in medicine a whole bunch of changes will take place i solve a preventative medicine that would probably render half the deaths that they complete for survival and there will be massive and detailed to society. transportation it makes a lot of sense if they change the basic mode of transportation. memorization is more to the dalia life. and we can share things with other people easier. so there is no need to have the same against somebody else. the other thing that is great is great to have in his necessities will become free.

it's already happening massively, so they begin to have a situation where a lot of things are very expensive. >> you could share better and you tend to work more and more applicable to things happening today. >> five is going to put them on the top of my list i would come to believe we need to take charge of the climate that we cannot take a stand off approach to it. the thing some of you might not clap to is we cannot treat it to the thing that we tried to not only harm that we have to engage with it and starts to guide it

and that is a controversial idea but i don't think we have a choice. we have to take charge and having clean safe water for everyone in the world. tough politically maybe at this point. if we are going to have a sharing economy we have to support everybody and not just make billionaires a bunch of insecure people. [applause] i suspect it doesn't work out either way it has to be an honest one and have more options i love the stuff like recycling with extreme efficiency. i think it is totally worthy to make technology because it is beautifully and you beautiful and you adore it. that is a legitimate reason.

i'm a little less interested in extreme one jeopardy that the trend right now is to create the longevity for people where you have these simulations of people's personalities and actual biological longevity is. that isn't sustainable that will make them receive steven pinker and i never want to see that so many definitive solution there. what i want more than anything else as a way for each person to find such diverse ways of succeeding but it's too confusing to get into conflicts anymore because we can't isolate the conflicting interests anymore. that might be a slightly complicated way of putting it. were there so many ways to succeed, people are not as

opposed to generate interest anymore. we are members of so many classes that we don't know how to form ourselves into groups to oppose each other. you know, if we are both angered and islamic and it also sounds like wait, what? that is the path to peace so i hope that we have a world of ever-increasing cognitive diversity in scale. [applause] thank you all for coming out here today. let's think sebastian again for speaking with us. [applause]

if you could make one change in u.s. policy unilaterally what would it be?

scenic fixing the system. select measures that make the government work more effectively. spinning on change? spinet i would want to get more americans to work for their country. >> if you're forecasting hats on. when will the first raise the rate? >> you can pass. >> when they think it makes sense. after co- >> if you ask an english major. >> i'm going to say another version of what he said. i don't think it matters when they raise rates at matters if they do it at the right time in terms of economic circumstances it's going to be difficult. [laughter] >> one word who is the biggest economic global competitor? >> ourselves. >> i would agree.

>> in number of number of petri attacked positions including electronic records collections expires sunday night at midnight the u.s. senate is meeting monday afternoon to see if they can change that. the senate devils and sunday at four eastern. they didn't even graduate from high school. that was largely because their father always said it would be curious if they had an interesting project they were working on. he knew how bright they were. without any question he was a

genius. orville was very bright and inventive and clever mechanically. but he didn't have the reach of mind that wilbert had. they loved music. they loved books. nathaniel hawthorne was his favorite writer. katherine loved sir walter scott in fact the brothers gave her a bust. all these people living in this little house with no running water or indoor plumbing, no electricity and they have a great order a giant tube or sister for a birthday present. there is a lot of hope in that. but i think that what i would like to get to know more about was the sense of purpose into sound like a bad pun but hyper

purpose not so many ordinary big idea in three months after the shooting and there is a panel of american editorial cartoonists discuss the role of satire and journalism this was the award in long island university. it's about one hour and 20 minutes. >> let me quickly introduce our panelists. >> for 45 years he has spared no public figure or ill-conceived policy and a unique approach to the political

commentary. he stands alongside such legendary cartoonists as the next panelist. for 42 years the author of 35 books has written novels, plays movie scripts and the autobiography. he said to me just to the other minute this was the first major one that he received. he took another 25 years and we are recognizing him with a pulitzer prize. [applause] now the political work and writing cut across multiple

platforms where more can be found in "the new york times," the paris review and the permanent collection of the museum of modern art. she has drawn in guantánamo bay and the rebels in serious. the guardian characterized her as equal parts, william s. burrough and cirque du soleil. i would add. [laughter] a senior writer unfortunately will not be with us. he got stuck in chicago where there's bad weather and problems with planes flying out. our moderator is the distinguished journalist and author and all the in all the bible say about him is that he wrote an article in 1971.

please turn off your cell phones. there will be a q-and-a later on. [applause] thank you all for being here i am honored to be among these artists but at least we have some of the best and brightest. once there were sensors, once there were state laws cartoonists and graphic artists. we are needing just three months after 12 people were murdered in paris and i read yesterday that

there are police still in paris newsrooms. and so it makes it even more of an honor to be with these people because they are brave and talented and they are facing a different kind of world i think. so the first thing i want to say is to respect all of them. george packer in the new yorker recently said the problem with free speech is that it's hard self-censorship, hitting the mute button is easy. and you not only have to be brave but you have to be smart and funny and that ain't easy. so, i would like to start with

the honoree who had the honor of writing the cartoons and he's done something in response to charlie that is a brilliant sleight-of-hand pull the rug out from under these people jobs and could you walk us through what you've done? >> i suspect you can all read that clearly enough. the problem i thought that this presented to all of us as american cartoonists at least talking with my colleagues is that we were so ambivalent professionally and don't really relate to the culture of the

french and we don't really have them in this country. jewll is more of the world of edgy cartooning just being an alternative newspapers his whole life. i have my career in the family newspaper, so i have a different set of constraints. we agreed on a number of things one, we were horrified by these murders because are part of our global family of cartoonists. but second we couldn't identify with what they had done. and i will get to that in a moment, but let me read the cartoon at first because finally this took me weeks to find out how to do this. so up at the top, the

cartoonists may have slipped from the headlines but they're in paris double creations live on. they have to get horrible panda not to mention in the bottom panel you're the voice mohammed here and put some clothes on. it was important for me to figure out how to honor the cartoonist without necessarily honoring the specifics of what they did. i wouldn't have drawn mohammed. that is not to say that i stay away from the issue. for years i'd written about islamic terrorists come in all the way back to these verses that earned me a bodyguard for a while. it's not that i think -- i hate

to speak for the group, so so i shouldn't, but it's not american cartoonists don't love the edginess doing battle in the name of things that we think are important. it's just the american tradition as was the french tradition at one time is always to punch down, i need to punch up not down. and the big mistake that we felt our colleagues or friends data is that they created a very insidious situation in which they actually caused mainstream muslim public entrance to align itself with anderson device without wires. there is an enormous sum of the entrance for them and this is not a great accomplishment. it's something to be talking this happened because their

approach was not challenging coming off the start of dialogue but simply to promote. we don't have quite the same tradition. and maybe jewll deals with its somewhat differently speaking somewhat differently speaking from the alternative world. but -- well i never saw myself as a part of the alternative world. [laughter] because there wasn't one when i began. i was looking for an outlet in which i could express what liberals back in the 50s post mccarthy they didn't do what know what they had, so when the people went around saying what they have to say on a specifically dangerous level with small rooms in small bars and other big dreams when they felt great because it felt like a very dangerous time in the

country. and because they might lose their jobs. so i was unemployable and i have nothing to lose. i could say whatever i pleased. and felt giddy and excited about doing that. there was a -- the thing they felt about the cartoon then and that i feel now is not so much commenting on the particular point at the moment or the particular happening on the news, but it's bringing along an audience that has been in a certain way teaching them the method of humor, and did my case panel by panel cutout to think in a different way, how to look at a different perspective compelled to consider another point of view. so come it wasn't necessarily about slamming somebody over the

head. it was about making people think because much of our lives then and now we are being brainwashed and to try to point to an alternative view through humor which took away the people who learned about to allow the plaintiff viewed to be attacked without saying getting defense. while if you're funny they tend not to be defensive. so doing all of these things and trying to turn it into specific issues that is basically how i saw it into the thing about democratic republicans and this guy or that

guy i thought that it was about what this country was and what had become. what it should be and what i hoped it would be and what it certainly wasn't and what it certainly isn't now. >> what was your reaction to the cartoon? >> i was on a personal level they are a small global family and even though i didn't know any of the charlie cartoons personally, i did the people who knew them. after that i was angry at so many different people. it was a very complicated anger. i was angry from every single repressive country in the world come every single country that spies on the dissidents from the u.s. to saudi arabia. we are using the murders of cartoonists that we've torn them a new one as a way to foster on their still warm bodies. i was angry as a crackdown on free speech over over france that happened after the

cartoonists were murdered. there was actually a parody cartoon of one of the covers that a young muslim entrance was arrested for posting on facebook. and i was angry after the americans who can't speak french, but they very often don't learn other languages and were commenting on these cartoons and making it seem like some regrettable choices fertility of who they were as opposed to, you know one regrettable choice after a lifetime of thousands of cartoons. there was a lot of outrage and my reaction. >> there's a question i meant to ask of all three of you. its consort of -- come before the whole charlie cartoons in. this is a question for each of you come is there something that made you an oppositional kind of person growing up?

where you could see through the pieties and it made you angry it made you funny? [laughter] >> welcome he knows i like to blame him. his work was very influential in my finding a career path. i can't blame him entirely because it is kind of accidental i was doing this in college as a kind of sports strip and i was scouted in the first five or six weeks and offered my current job. it's a story that my kids hate on every level. i haven't put in the 10,000 hours. i put in maybe 30 and i was given this opportunity so i ended up putting in the 10,000 but it was kind of after-the-fact and i was making all of my mistakes into public

view. but jules was influential for a number of us. his was the first that i was aware of where the main point was about the idea about the subject and you may have a different explanation for that there wasn't much change from image to image and i always thought that's just to get my attention but i took all that to heart and of course i was of the counterculture. i was in college at the time when people were pushing against every institution and so when i graduated from college i thought it was perfectly normal that i would take those interests and those concerns, politics, rock 'n roll, all the things that

bubbled up to the surface in my life during those four years and take them into the comics page. well, most editors were unfamiliar and so there was a lot of crossing the red lines early. that's why i find it so difficult to talk about the red line now because i have that debate over and over. at one point of this is just how cool it was i got so tired of getting thrown out of newspapers that i sent out a questionnaire to editors and i said which of theing subjects should i not address and i put a list of things and i send it off to a dozen editors and most of them

took the bait and checked the boxes. finally i heard from a wiser head and he said this is just a bullshit, it has nothing to do with the subject. are you serious and if you can come they don't and if you can't convey the seriousness of purpose that you are trying to move people there is nothing you can't write about and i think one of the proudest moments in my career was two or three years ago when i wrote about the texas sonogram wall and transvaginal probes, language that isn't usually in the comics. [laughter] and i was kicked out of about 70 papers bolted early. i had built up enough credibility as a serious commentator they thought okay

this one isn't quite right for the community for any number of reasons but that doesn't mean you have to go away. we just can't hear your voice this week. i'm not entitled and hundreds of communities every day. that is a privilege and lots of times i get that but sometimes i don't. that's called editing. it's not called censorship. i've always defended the editors who've thrown me out of the newspapers because that is their job. they make dozens of decisions every day as to what belongs and what doesn't. >> it is a form of quality control although you are still being affected. >> it shows that you you're still dangerous a little bit. >> or that you touched a sore point for that particular

community. not only smoking strips made it into the north carolina papers. when i wrote that i went dark in las vegas the same thing in california. there are going to be regional -- most recently i did something about jeb bush and the paper through without because it was too political. [laughter] ..

>> except they did highlight specific things. we are doing this for a very particular reason. just just because you can't say something doesn't necessarily -- >> i agree with you. >> writes to come what responsibilities. >> absolute agreement. there is a huge difference between what you should be legally permitted to say and what it makes your horrible human as you say. they do the work of disgusting humans. and i don't think those two things are contradictory and all. >> jewels, you have some fairly strong words to say about the state of american cartooning particularly newspaper cartooning in recent views.

>> you may know the figures better than i, but i figured out something like 200 editorial cartoons. when i started it was 200 editorial cartoons who made their living from the home paper where they got salaries and benefits. now it's under 50. >> benefits? [laughter] >> if you are trying to cut a budget of a newspaper, a full salary -- >> out of those 45 across the station maybe five of them are worth looking at. it has always been a small minority. not everyone was as brilliant as paul conrad

were a few of the others. extraordinarily. such strong cartoons by race and civil rights. i don't know whether it was the sun-times. he was actually talking real stuff about civil rights that was going on. this was unheard of at the time. >> you included in one of the things what i thought was a brilliant take on liberal topography over civil rights. can we see that one now? >> this was the early 60s.

he picked up on it. i did write it when he picked up on it. i've done freedom. finally lost whitey. what i loved among american racists is that every part of black culture that is available they will pick up, but not blacks. they will pick up the music music, pick up a style where the hats backwards. they will act cool. they will get a certain swing in the hips but actually acknowledge that there are other races not just black, but other races

that are worth tolerating that is a no-no. so you can plunder and that is what whites have always done you can plunder other cultures but you can't let them into the club. that is a no-no. >> and did you get backlash from liberals who did not like to see their topography exposed? 's. >> zero, the answer to that question is i don't know. i did not get that much feedback. you get a lot of feedback. the voice readers didn't basically. they did not communicate with me except on very weird issues which had nothing to do with anything. i didn't get much feedback. which was both disappointing to me but also you know, allowed me to just pay attention to what i wanted to do. wonderful attention from

figures in the black community and that made me feel good. when i finally did a collection of cartoons and civil rights he wrote the introduction which i found a great honor. the man who not only organized the march on washington for me on a personal level taught me everything i knew about race. when i was out of the army and looking to meet girls and left-wing places because the only place. and i went to a pacifist group called the fellowship of reconciliation where an unknown speaker was speaking on civil rights. i thought what can you tell me. i know everything about civil rights. and then he started talking and in a way that changed my entire life. the way i looked at things in the way i worked.

he said that the most important issue in america is not the cold war and the fight with the soviet union. it's that we never resolve the issues of the civil war's. we're war's. we're still fighting the civil war. and this is not about how white liberals should give blacks of break. this affects the faith of the negro, as we call it. it was about all of us and how -- and what he had to say than his familiar now because it has become accepted rhetoric but it was radical and revolutionary stem blew my mind apart. i got to know him. affected not just the cartoons on race that i did but everything. we tried to figure out what there telling us and what is really going on its and how i approach this in a way that it communicates to the reader.

>> something i was baking about this morning when i was watching a video of the black man scott who was shot eight times while running away. are there some things that are just too awful to caricature, to capture in visual terms it's or just i don't know, break out of the frame. >> as awful as that was let's wait for the trial and see whether he's found not guilty. which is the american way. >> the shocking thing is that they are putting them on trial in the 1st place. the bravery of the guy who founded's. >> and and the story of that guy, this young man from the dominican republic was at 1st he thought of erasing this. his 1st thought in a free

country of america, erasing it because he might get into trouble. trouble. then he took it to police headquarters. the way they treated him command do your stuff. he got out of there knowing that if he turned the tape over them's he would never it is from back and in the tape would never be seen again. >> how about you? not necessarily this one. >> i will give you an extreme example. i'm. i'm sorry, not here. it is his organization. when september 11 happened pretty much there was a moratorium a moratorium on humor. in fact essays were written on irony. and the late-night shows one dark. all of the you know, so stunned and did not know how to respond in a way that would be socially useful.

a very interesting thing they said you know, comedy is not the opposite of serious. comedy is the opposite of despair. and so how do we direct their response that confronts that despair? so their headlines two days later were -- i wrote i wrote them down just because -- >> the jerry bruckheimer. >> one of them was life becomes a jerry bruckheimer a jerry bruckheimer movie. >> i don't remember that one's. god clarifies don't kill rule. hijackers surprised to find selves in hell. they get thousands of letters from people's who were not shot that a response to war with the humor because that was the salvation.

and so this was a wonderful response and there were thousands of letters the importance of the onion, you know and that day everyone else kind of figured it out a couple weeks later they came back on air's and realize we have a job to do. we are actually part of the healing. >> you see the same thing throughout syria and lebanon they are having their lives threatened. instead of giving in into despair they have reacted with vicious mockery and hilarious mockery. there is mockery. there is a syrian produced web series' actors dressing out. there is a rock band in beirut that sings songs. there is this incredible tradition of parity in the middle east and that has really been turned to great effect toward isis right now. the thing is authoritarian bastards throughout the world of every stripe you

know secular other cherry authoritarian bastards, just authoritarian, they hate humor. the gets under the skin. there is something viscerally irreverent about it. serious people. that is why. the skills them. when hitler was empower one of the things he made a specific list of was cartoonists in england who had drawn me in pictures of him. he specifically wanted to find these people and kill tell them because they hurt his feelings that much. when i got an interesting instance in terms of someone i have angered. i went down to guantánamo bay in the summer of 2013. >> can we show? there we go. >> when i was in guantánamo i i was for been from drawing the faces of anyone who work there. i don't believe in hiding the fact that you are being censored's.

but when i went to guantánamo i made a lot of fun of the press tour the way that they sort of tried to ingratiate themselves with journalists. i pointed out. and the military was so angry. one officer called out my editor and said that i made him look like a tool. >> it's interesting. >> it's interesting. you think there is something about the visual that is more -- well, gets under the skin or even in the best verbal satirists is it the fact of caricature? making them look ugly? >> it is the immediacy of it. it is immediate. you have to read a whole essay. and then and then also there are no barriers there is no linguistic barrier. you don't have you don't have to speak fluent french to know that picture you had at the beginning was a mean

caricature someone is. they is. they laughed through time space, borders languages. they just go straight into your i. >> well, thomas masters all of our hero and precursor in 19th century most of his audience was illiterate. >> great cartoonists in new york. tammany hall corruption. in fact he the mayor let new york. captured in spain. >> he said you know, i don't care what they write about me. nobody. it's the damn picture. and the pictures were

extraordinary. there were a number of extra ordinary people at that time >> do you think there is a at all fine line between caricature and sort of offensiveness or oversimplifying or stereotype or is the best kind of visual representation one that somehow evades a stereotype? >> again i think again i think it requires a brain in an opinion. i mean, not just lyndon johnson had a big nose, so i'll do a a big nose and of that lyndon johnson. the best lyndon johnson was by david ravine. the greatest caricaturist of the last half of the 20th century and most often the new york review of books. lbj had a famous called

operation and there was a photograph of him because he was a famous bulgarian as well as famous everything else. and in the picture he is holding up his shirt and showing his scarf and his gallbladder. in the new york review it's a wonderful caricature of lbj same picture but the stars were vietnam that is probably showing. and that seemed to sum up the vulgarity of the president his personal possession of the vietnam war which is why we kept escalating. i mean,, profound comment on so many things that were going on at the time and the cartoon company all-in-one one-shot. >> do you think there are

anything, any of you are beyond the limits for that you would not touch? >> well i mean, well, i mean it is always a personal question. what you can do a good job touching very much depends on who you are. i would never draw mohammed myself. >> you would never what? >> stupid for me. but if someone who was muslim living in a muslim country did a picture of mohammed they call this the cartoon. one of whom was murdered recently, that is not putting down's. is challenging a power structure. it's fundamentally different. i mean the producers would have done fundamentally different things now i mean seriously.

a german cast and crew. it would've been a different feel to its. yeah. i think very often they come from who you are and what sort of place you occupy in the power structure. >> i agree with that. i don't think i don't think -- am not quite sure where your question is coming from. there is no subject that i stay away from. the subjects subjects that i have not collided with on my joined board are really a failure of imagination not of nerve i just can't think of anything that is either entertaining for insightful to say about the subject. not because i fear the repercussions. >> it's interesting you mention your drawing board. people might be interested in the physical layout of how you produce these. he said that the joined board and do 1st drafts

and revise. >> i do i do the work the same way i have since i was in grad school. i was doing this while i was a grad student. i just try the pencil and then ascended to assistant to accident. it goes to the 3rd assistant who does the color work. >> are really 1st draft that's it. and it's always in the neck of time. there's no time. you know, i think some artists need to have that kind of structure's the need to have possibly been they can say that's good enough. >> a special room where you do it. >> well, i do have i do have a studio. i have worked everywhere through the years. how soon after you write the script do you think you have

to sit down and drug? you drive? you leave anytime? is there any time to leave? >> no. and for no. and for that reason i have to take the ideas as they come in order. so there's a story arc that goes from monday to saturday i may i may come up with thursday 1st and then reverse engineered. you create your you create your own problems, but the desperation is such that if you have an idea you have to use it. >> i'm sure your asked all the time what you do when you don't get an idea's. the answer to that for most of us as thanks for not noticing. >> for instance this seems like a work of much time and effort. >> about 20 hours maybe it's. i start out with these rough sketches that are eligible. almost a shorthand version of drawing.

and i take a big peace of paper, put it on the floor soak it it with water and drift dive into it. then i start drawing. i use quote we will pen, will still lives the opponent paid if the pen. >> i don't know, but it sounds interesting. >> you know, if you know if you are looking at how they wrote and little house on the prairie. so i think -- >> little house on the prairie. >> obviously. i think so. so i think in the pencil simultaneously. i am too distractible to sit down and think. but. but i am compulsive. drawing for me is like picking scabs something. >> to do this while you were at gitmo? >> no, when i was at home. i kept a i kept a really detailed sketchbook including the bases. i actually developed though :-) is because i was in the

courtroom. they had an official court sensor with sticker and look to my sketchbook. he was sketchbook. he was allowed to cut out anything he didn't like. >> really? and what sort of things to and they like? >> one of the things was faces of anyone who were. >> i see. that's what i did instead. it's interesting. the 2nd time i came back came back they realized how grim and looked's the only have these black masks. they found the most attractive the wearing shorts of us. >> did you start from the beginning?

>> well, i start of the pencil because that was what i was most comfortable with. i would write 1st pencil notes are ballpoint pen trying to figure out the idea. and for me it was always the idea that had become 1st. after a while's not knowing where i was going. classic improvisation. you start with an opening line. sometimes i remains the opening line it begins to

take you on this trip. by the 3rd panel i figured out where going with a goes on work as to start all over again. it's calcitriol and their's. i kind of know what the.is. in my case the kind of cartoon i did it often had to do with how the use of language in an unofficial official way. you know, the distrust of government and the content for government and hatred for government that we now find with the tea party and on the right the only began on the american left. it was the belief of the american left the that nothing we tell you is the truth nothing government says is true. what i believe in part to be

some. there was enough evidence to back it up. the time that i was starting there were nuclear tests underground nuclear tests. the government was always bringing out statistics to show there are no harmful effects of radiation from the leaks they came from his nuclear tests. sheep and cattle were falling over our west. eventually got cancer from working out there. so i did a cartoon in which the government is announcing as people follow that there are no harmful effects of radiation. to take the language we use to fool people, the light of people to mislead people had to satirize way out of hand to make it funny what was really going on in a a way that would make people i hope, think about the

considerate. that was the game. >> is. >> is that the one about the ad man trying to come up with an ad to convince people? >> it was good for you. that was one of them. >> is a question. i guess your probably aware of this will question the trigger warning that has come up recently. people familiar with this. survivors of trauma's feel that they should be protected from being reminded of it. it would cause ptsd and therefore a lot of traumatic things that happens to people from beatings to rape

to whatever responsible for warning people who may want to leave the room or something like that. do that. do you think that this is something that is going to eventually affect your work? >> as i understand it's people who -- my friends who do work on for your warnings they view it more like having an ingredient label on food so that you know that if you have analogy. i mean for me i personally think trigger warnings make a lot of sense and specific communities. like if you were on a web form of people were recovering they might have a trigger warning. people mention the weight. but i've also heard really amazing critiques of trigger warnings to cook to me

discussing particularly onerous on anyone particularly onerous on anyone let's just do it after years as escaped you and and is supported once he had the open a bottle. somebody said something or did something you are able with will shrug it off and safe are getting go on. [applause] so sensitive and watchful as to not heard people who are horrible in so many ways we

get a generation, we get several generations it never grew up. and i think one of the things we've given up on is the notion of him. >> and that speak to people it doesn't make any sense and the only one who loses his boxes to check or

something like that one of the biggest scary subjects. >> well i can only talk about my own experience because i i don't know what the shutting down. i no that there is a double standard and that i am sort of this editorial cartoonist of conventional can't service. we know that other strips out the different standards. i can't really tell you what kind of constraints they are under. i haven't heard you know, any amber light warnings editors for years. you shall not right on a particular -- >> religion okay? >> religion is fine. reproductive issues or five.

georgia fine. it's how you deal with it. >> they threw up their hands. >> i mean i think the only thing that you are really not allowed to do in america for the sake of your career as a american soldiers about's. >> what? >> american soldiers are bad. >> i've done that a few times, but not generically. in the specific for specific reasons. and my -- among my very 1st trips were depicting you know, behavior of our armed forces in vietnam. admittedly i was told from a kind of hippie fantasia perspective why can't we all get along vietcong terrorist (the american g.i. somewhat you know, inauthentic view of what was going on over. but that has been a very

rich source of material for me trying to understand the military issues and obviously if i make blanket statements about troops that's not going to help me in trying to do with their issues. i've written about ptsd and many of the other sorts of lawrence's that warriors from home with. it's not that i try not to antagonize them it's just that for me has always been just because i'm a liberal there's no good reason for me to be welcome on military bases in such. but enough -- we got enough feedback from the field. the guys writing about our issues. i think my breakthrough was in 1990 when i got a letter from the than chief of staff of the army's gordon sullivan who said -- this

was just before desert storm say saying were getting a lot of really good strong response in the field from soldiers who seem to feel that you are connected to their issues which i was. so i was invited over. i was brought over by a tank commander. at 1st i couldn't get out of the country because to get in theater in those days you had to go through saudi arabia command you needed a visa. i had the misfortune of timing has been in the week writing about how the saudi's were setting up the war. although young men were in country clubs' now we had 500,000 troops in the desert so i can get a visa. this went on for weeks. 10,000 journalists downrange i can get a visa. and so i get this call from

a guy named bill nash, commander of a tank per grade. i here you've you been having trouble getting here. yeah. kind of. he said come anyway. i anyway. i got on a plane with no visa and arrived in riyadh. two am. i get closer and and closer to the immigration desk. at that this isn't going to go well. at the last minute side door opens and the couple gis came and picked me up and to me out the side door must of been a helicopter and fluently. and that told me when september 11 happened the given reason, everyone has forgotten this but bin laden's stated reason was military presence in saudi arabia. arabia. there is no question they are the country at that particular moment. they can do whatever they wanted and they acted like it. i was flown to the space. i was met at the helipad by col. nash's. he said, you know, i was reading you when

i was in vietnam when i was lieutenant trying to wrangle these mismatched conscripts and keep them alive. and a hateful war. i was curious about you. you know it might be good if you wrote about military issues. he can play with the toys and enjoy all us of its a professional force. think you'll find a very different. so that was the beginning of the dod readily they said amputation. come find out what that means. long story short they got me into walter reed.

i came and went for years. they were suffering and perform their duty and i names. that's an interesting balancing act. i was trying to keep the. >> migrant workers. >> i was doing investigative piece right now there are building branches. it's an migrant labor has long been incredibly exploited in the golf.

a construction worker in the gulf might make $200 a $200 a month to work 12 hours a day doing brutal physical labor. this is long been an issue. these workers have a passport confiscated. however, what was happening these western institutions are saying we are different. were not like that at all command it wasn't true at all. they were exactly like every other company is doing construction. and so with the help of a local journalists and the young construction worker i was able to sneak on the site and also in to migrant worker camps and talk to these guys talk about their ambition, what it was like to be a worker cannot talk to them about whether or not they were happy. there was a lot of this idea

that because these men come from poor countries that there are just passively accepting getting paid $200 a month. but actually i found that wasn't true. they went on strike all the time and they were just getting arrested. so i tried really hard to get to know people. and with that story a lot of sites that was covered in the western press there was this idea that these guys were like cattle these easily fooled presence or get taken advantage of. i was like, no these guys are brave, ambitious, and yet they are being repressed they are also they are also fighting against it. i want to portray that complexity and do them the honor. i truly believe that good art is antithetical to cliché to rebut cliché does is rob people of the humanity and in turn them in the objects stereotypes. good art is all about puncturing that. just by

doing art that is good thoughtful, rigorous' you are cutting away at the cliché and trying to get to the truth of the matter. >> jewels you sort of have revolutionized the comic world. did you invent the graphic novel? >> speaking of the graphic novel much is been doing for the past few years without being called the graphic novel do a series of graphic novels. in doing real characters who have real in a real world's and day by day and find out a little more about them. a great tradition, the old newspaper comic strips. we delve into. when you put them all together we read all my god

it's not. it's characters developing. satirical or humorous'. it is a story. i loved from the beginning the adventure strips as a kid. the strips that ran in the daily papers in the 1930s. particularly the work of mel and some others. and these guys i control of them. i did not know how. i backed into overthrowing the government. [laughter] but i -- a few years ago i

just got tired of doing politics. i get tired of commenting. and i got tired of all the issues that have been solved starting again from scratch how we play the same record on the same issues and i said screw it. i'm doing something. i can do this anymore. i'm too old. old. began working on graphic novels. that's what i do now. >> what was your 1st one? >> it just came out last spring cold, mother. [laughter] the graphic novel. 1933. his during the war in 1943. now i'm at work on the prequel 1931. there will be a 3rd book which we can finish it all up about the blacklist use in hollywood. >> , mother. well, nothing is off the table for you.

>> your 1st finding out. >> i guess it's something i've always admired. i want to take some questions but i want to fund not knowing you guys well is this something you would like to add or subtract are due the discussion so far? >> the pressure here. >> i was very moved by molly talking about her work and how she goes about it.

hope -- how to present this? was the best way of communicating? i don't want to make a speech. i don't want to yell at people. how do i get across the.i want to make it is being made some help. the serious journalists. as is usually the same crap as everyone else's. how. had i get across my.of view and make it work and is a combination of words and pictures whole different form's command we think differently about it. and we think differently about it. and what you do is just an extraordinary example of what is out there.

and there are some wonderful wonderful columns out there today all over the place. and it is terrific to me. an old part to see's where i adored as a kid and adore every bit as much or even more today this a knew golden age. i really am grateful for us. >> i am always grateful to be on the same stage as jewels. my new friend. jewels just reminded me my 1st exposure to his work was not as a cartoonist even though it was cartoons i was hearing. i was a theater nerd. and so we did lots of plays in my high school different parts of different place. and i went to see three short plays the somebody was putting on.

they were hilarious and funny and moving. >> what were. >> what were they? >> one of them was monroe and one of them was -- they were cartoons stories that jewels had written. and i did not know them as cartoons. i thought you were a playwright and i was just listening to an amazing funny. and that ring my bell. i was at the other guy. and what i did not understand is i circle back to my childhood interest that how much these two art forms had in common. and so i have been doing the last couple of years a tv show called alpha house. and the work that we do everyday is such good preparation for that. characters dialogue, story arc. it's just you know you know television now which is such a wonderful space to work and is so close to the

storytelling except you don't have the absolute control that you do. >> but you have great editor's. >> great actors to make you seem funnier than you are. >> these guys are legends. i am honored to get to share a stage with them. that is all i have to add. >> well, on that note before we take questions may be a round of applause for these people. [applause] >> so i guess you want to write up its at the maker for questions. >> or you can just shut them out. your pretty close. >> is not going to register unless you go to the mic. [laughter]

>> don't be shy people. [laughter] >> we're with you. we will wait. >> i beat them. [applause] >> my question is for molly. i am curious as a woman when you go overseas and try to sneak into these places farther challenges you face because you are female trying to get in that may be a male cartoonist would not face? >> you know everyone has been incredibly courteous and respectful to me. people in the middle east are some of the most hospitable to i courteous people to deal with on earth, to be honest.

i i have never been in a situation personally were i felt that i was at a disadvantage because i was a woman. >> thank you. >> although i have i have to say, i have always been with male translators also. i've always been treated with the utmost respect. >> yes, sir. >> yes, sir. >> i have a question based on ethnicity and politics. from what i heard earlier you seem to suggest that most of the brilliant satirists in the political they are leftists. and comics strip artists seem to be primarily jewish even though jews are very small proportion of the population. so could you comment on your jewish left background? >> i don't know what your

talking about. [laughter] 's. >> i will tell you. i have your boat here. i would like you to autograph it. it is filled with jewish left commentary. >> i've never seen that book. i never met a jew. >> backing in the forward. >> well, you got me. that is a jewish question. the comic strip art of my childhood mostly irish catholic. a few jews but the jews are mostly in the comic books. they came from new york. >> cleveland. >> beg your pardon. >> cleveland. >> yes. they did. they came to new york. and you know, and i breach the notion many years ago

the superman really didn't come from the planet krypton. he came from the planet men's. in any case i don't think that's true anymore. cartoonists -- not necessarily jewish anymore. the comic book artists, they come from all over the place but it is but it is a generation's that is for generations away, five perhaps where i am. so anything i really comment about is about stuff that happened so far back. you want to know what to where i came from why because there was a great depression, because out of the great depression people polled political alliances in order to survive. and he said, when i was a kid to thought he was my age

he said i lived in brookland. there was a communist party, socialist party, the socialist workers party, socialist labor party the american labor party. i i was 22 years old and moved to manhattan before i heard the democratic party's does that not answer your question? >> i thought you would come up. i was new in the community and wanted to meet the girls. >> also true. >> next question over there. >> high. very cool that you can all do work in the field's play going to all these places and getting hands-on experience of all these different people. i'm wondering when you are not in the field in the country what knew sources do you like car do you feel

like you trust because there are a lot to fund the media often skew things one way or the other. how do how do you feel you are making a really good informed viewpoint on certain subjects? >> it is a lot of failure in trying. i mean,, just the act of writing something is almost always skewed. reality is infinitely complex. you have 500 words. what you choose to take and jam into that 500 words always speaks about who you are. there is no unbiased source of anything. in in terms of what i personally read other like the guardian for big complicated line reads i love the weather review of books. bbc is good. some really great reporting. but i follow writers i admire. it's easier now than ever to

do. the single cohesive platform is pretty dead. very often better to find writers i trust. also sometimes you look at twitter and follow people on the ground in those areas. that is not always accurate. very often they're are things that are wildly inaccurate but it is often the most unfiltered way to find out what's going on in a certain place in a certain time. >> thanks. >> you welcome. >> next question. it's. >> it seems that -- >> speak up a little bit. >> i believe it was during the bush gore election that the studies came out saying that denying ally tends to increase the public's public's ability to believe the lie in the 1st place in the more that you try and fight it the less effective you would be.

and it seems that to defeat an idea the only way to defeat something is to defend the. do you do you feel additional responsibilities because of that, the importance of satire to discredit ideas that are false or harmful. >> ideas that are harmful. >> in my case is a lot that has to be accomplished in a comic strip. you have to frontloaded with information that the audience trusts. and thereafter yet to tell a story that is premised on what is contained in the 1st and sometimes the 2nd panel. there's a lot you have to do and so you have to create the kind of rhythm that the

audience can anticipate to understand what is true and what your making out. i don't know -- i guess we doing it over and over again i figured out how. in the case of what your describing this is a set of facts that is not widely believed or known that certain people expressing this.of view whatever it is however complicated it is you have to do it right away. then you discredit ridicule it have fun with it. reverse engineering's it seems it would be exhausting just deconstructing it. and it is a good thing that i'm not a a public intellectual that i work more intuitively i would never get anything done. i just have to trust my instincts and then, of course, that is were editors command. actually your wrong about this.

it's misleading. i don't get so much of that anymore not because of my standing, simply because i no how to do it after all these years. but yeah. that is an interesting observation about one of the responsibilities of humor. particularly in a reality challenged environment like now. you know, i have a character whose job is to supply an alternative set of facts to clients. you know, different reality than the one that science is trying to observe or independent observers. so you call this company and he provides you with arguments to be your wife into submission with. your all set of facts because hers are inconvenient for your officemate or whatever. and so it is an issue that i grapple with but as i say

it is never in a particularly a particularly intellectually coherent way. it is more intuitive. the artists i have always related to: robert altman by got to work with on his show. it was entirely from the gut sometimes sometimes to his detriment. sometimes it was not clear where the story was going. but i do think you know not being as smart as everybody else's for people who actually think things, it is actually probably part of the job description. you have to be able to simplify it. >> thank you. >> next question. >> is sort of unintentionally ended up writing 45 years and counting on novel. hours wondered, do you have in the back of your mind how the story ends? >> i don't. the only thing that has occurred to me is when that moment comes it just seems

to me that this trip started on a random moment have two kids living together an interesting chat. i think it will end on something just as quotidian. i don't see any need to tie everything together. i have 74 characters in the strip. longtime readers would recognize and differentiate. and so you know, i don't feel that there has to be some closure to all those storylines. you know i just bring them all together for these years and i think it will just end on no particular -- an event of no particular moment. >> any further questions? well, thank you all for coming. [applause]

>> book tv prime time during the congressional memorial day recess ends tonight with a look at some of this year's book fairs and festivals. at 8:00 o'clock eastern from the tucson festival of books a panel on concussions and the future of football. at 905 eastern a savanna but festival discussion with author of sally ride america's 1st woman in space. at 1010 we go to the san antonio book festival to

hear from alan thorpe who wrote soldier girls the battles of three women at home and at work. and from and from the la times festival of books at 11:00 o'clock eastern viewer colin with ben shapiro. ..