>> host: what gave you the idea to write about ruth cater ginsberg and sandra day o'connor? that was a happy story. you cannot think about that subject but more importantly at the aclu. so that was an obvious subject. but sandra day o'connor came to the supreme court first. that women could rise to the highest job in the lane and. so i thought do they know each other?

no. they know each other. but they made an alliance that made both of them more powerful. to see that sandra day o'connor said and to pave the way and then ginsberg is so unbelievably excellent in her job she would be another successful women. so i love what they did for

women. that was a model for women in the future more than any you could alone. with to resolve the cases are very interesting. and by june we will have a lot of supreme court decisions and i wanted by readers to understand how they changed the law for women. i did all of those things in the book. >> did you find a

significant case. >> there were a couple but a portion of that violence against women act the supreme court said it was beyond the authority of the federal government. . .

>> so it's a pretty good record ana pretty good reflection of what they knew was important more them to do. for them to do. >> did they grant interviews to you? >> i met with each of them. o'connor said there wasn't enough material here for a book. >> how many pages? >> oh, almost 400. [laughter] and what's wonderful about it is that it tells the story of how ginsburg started at the aclu, and then she goes to the keyes circuit -- d.c. circuit, and o'connor picks up the baton and carries women equality forward while she's on the supreme court of the united states. and then at the critical moment in 1993, ginsburg comes on to the supreme court, and now since

2005 ginsburg has been carrying the torch. so i was able to go back and forth between them without much difficulty as a writer because the spotlight went from one to the other in a very orderly way. now we have sotomayor and kagan who are carrying it forward in a different and more powerful way built on shoulders of the women who preceded them. so it was easy, it was easy to write, it was an easy book to write. [inaudible conversations]

>> o.k., welcome. i'm esther, and i'm the director here at sixth and i, and it is my pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the saf that you see wand -- the saf that you see wandering around and all of the people who are a part of sixth and i. so we ask this question that sometimes seems kind of silly but tonight not so silly, how many of you are here for the first time? no, you're not here for the first time. that's my husband. [laughter] that's wishful thinking. [laughter] okay. but there are a lot of others of you who are here for the first time, and it always amazes me with soldout events and hundreds and hundreds of people who come through here that there's still people coming for the first time, and we love that. it means you get to see what we're about and that you'll come

back again. and i ask that question for a very special reason today, and i'll tell you what that is in a minute. this building was originally opened in 1908, 107 years ago. it was a synagogue for the first 45 years and then an african methodist episcopal church for the next 50. when the church relocated and put the building up on the market, they desperately wanted it to continue to be a house of god, and they they had been loog for a buyer x. it's unusual for a building in search of a congregation to succeed in that way. finally, they had an offer from someone who wanted to turn it into a nightclub. [laughter] and there are a lot of people who say that we do turn it into a nightclub many nights of the week. [laughter] there's rock music here, there's

classical music, world music, there are two great concerts coming this weekend that i really highly recommend with washington performing arts. well, within 24 hours of that offer being made, three generous washington families said we can't let this happen. they had a vision for the building. actually, they weren't quite sure what vision was, but they knew the building had to be saved. now, these are people who -- this is not exactly what you call a great business model, three developers buying a synagogue or a church. they never imagined that they would own a house of worship, but they had an intuition that there was a huge, unmet need in this community. they also thought that spiritual and sexual -- [laughter] that too! [laughter] is freud here?

[laughter] that spiritual -- this is a stand-up comedy night -- that spiritual and secular interests could coincide and inform each other and in doing so, make for a richer overall experience. the reason i said this this is a special evening and that i really wanted to tell you that history is because irene and nate pollin were one of those founding families, and we have the pleasure of having irene with us here tonight, making this a very internal evening. [applause] a very special evening. it was their foresight and generosity that made the past 11 years of community-build, thought-provoking tie log like -- dialogue like what we're going to hear tonight and live entertainment all possible. and we are so grate. and to -- grateful. and to bring the history of the building full circle, bob

pollin, irene's son, is here tonight, and we are flighted to welcome -- delighted to welcome another generation of the pollin family. tonight's going to be a lively conversation on one of the most pressing international problems of the day, climate change. it'll be a conversation by two leading global thinkers on the environment and the economy. and this event tonight falls just in time for the u.n. climate change conference happening on november 30th in paris. and, hence, you see c-span is here filming, because it is such an important evening. bob pollin is distinguished professor of economics at the university of massachusetts at amherst, and he is well known as the co-director of the political economy research institute. in "greening the global economy," bob takes on the widely-held belief that protecting the environment and

expanding job opportunities are not conflicting goals. and he offers hard numbers and original research from all along the political spectrum to prove it wrong and to offer a bold, new solution. in addition to bob, tonight we're flighted to -- we're delighted to have joseph romm with us here as well. he is a fellow at the center for american progress and the founding editor of the highly regarded blog "climate progress." "rolling stone" included joe on the list of a hundred people who are reinventing america. "time" magazine named him a, quote, hero of the environment and the web's most influential climate change blogger. joe's new book is "climate change: what everyone needs to know," and it offers the most up-to-date examination of climate change's foundational

science, its implications for the future and the core, and core clean energy solutions. you can see what a special night this is going to be. and then tonight's conversation is going to be moderated by danielle -- [inaudible] the managing director of energy policy at the center for american progress. later this evening you're going to be invited to come up and ask questions. because this is being taped and because we all want to hear the questions, please, come up to the mic. and then following the conversation, you're all going to have an opportunity to have your books signed. please join me in welcoming this distinguish canned panel, bob pollin, joe romm and daniel boston. [applause] danielle boston. >> thank you, esther. thank you, everybody, for joining us here tonight. i think that this is just perfect timing to have this discussion, because in one week we're going to be sitting down to give thanks and eat turkey and have really passionate

arguments with family members that we don't agree with -- [laughter] and i'm hoping that climate change will be -- well, hopefully you all agree on climate change, but if you don't, hopefully this discussion will help provide some great context for you for next thursday and going forward. so, bob and joe, before we dive into questions, bob, i thought i'd start with you and just ask about the motivation for writing what i believe is now your eighth book? >> but anyway, before i answer that, i just also want to say esther stole my thunder a little bit. that was great. i just have to acknowledge how meaningful it is for me to be in this building. i remember very, very well one afternoon sitting in my office in amherst, massachusetts, getting a phone call from my father, and he says, guess what i just did? [laughter] what? i just bought a synagogue.

[laughter] so i said, okay, you bought a synagogue. that's how this whole thing got started. so, of course, i feel his spirit tonight, what esther and his staff have done here in the last 11 years is incredible. and so congratulations to you. [applause] i'm also happy to see so many friends and family here, and danielle, a close friend, who has another friend coming soon. >> not tonight though. [laughter] >> anyway, why did i write book? well, it's really the culmination or at least a stopping point on a very larger research project, a lot of which was done with friends such as danielle at the center for american progress and bracken hedged ricks who -- hendricks who's my co-author on a study that we took six years to write.

and then i wrote a similarly long and obtuse one for the united nations. so the point with this book was to compress it and make it -- get the main points across to a broader audience. and really i was trying, so i really had in mind if you, you know, if you can handle, like, high school economics or high school math or science, this book is for you. so, you know, that was the level at which i was trying to convey the critical ideas. the most critical idea in the whole book and of all these gigantic studies is really very simple which is working with all the available data, if we take the data seriously, that it's very clear we can stabilize the climate through a very simple set of measures, focusing around

investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency at more or less -- not a huge level, at more or less around a prosecutor and a half of gdp -- a percent and a half of gdp at a global level. that's a lot of money, but it's doable. and when we invest that level, it's not money taken out from other things. it creates jobs, it creates more jobs than maintaining our existing fossil fuel economy. it also creates new opportunities for small scale energy systems, people putting solar panels on their roof. i was just in india talking about in rural india right now 40% of the people don't have electricity at all. so creating small scale energy systems is going to completely transform developing countries. so the argument that is frequently made against taking action on climate change is that you can take action, but it is

going to, it's going to create huge costs, that it's going to reduce gdp, reduce economic opportunity, reduce jobs. and what i found in all these big studies which i then compressed into this little book, it's quite the opposite. building the green economy is a great opportunity in terms of climate stabilization, it's a great opportunity in terms of expanding human well being. >> so what it sounds is your book is a way for people who aren't ph.d. economists to not just understand that message, but also to be able to relay it and parlay it into their everyday lives. >> well, yeah. i think unless high school students are coming out with ph.d.s in economics, i mean, i really think that this can be read, you know, usefully by anyone that's in high school now. that's how i wrote it, at least that was the idea. >> thank you. and, joe, what would your -- you're also a prolific writer. you've written a lot of books. what prompted you to write your

latest book? >> well, oxford university press asked. [laughter] that was -- yeah. i do write, i write, you know, 10-20,000 words a month, so i wasn't going to write any more books. but they asked. they have a series of primers called what even needs to know, what everyone needs to know about china, what everyone needs to know about agriculture, and they asked me to write this book. and i -- it's a general audience book. so that's something different than i do. over the last ten years, i, you know, write for the center for american progress, i founded the blog "climate progress" mostly because i had been a clean energy person. i'd been at the department of energy as an acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy back in the clinton administration and had been doing clean energy work, and then my brother lost his home in hurricane katrina, and he asked me if he should rebuild.

when i started talking to climate scientists and going to lectures like this and reading literature, i realized, first, things were more dire than i realized and, secondly, that climate scientists weren't doing a very good job of communicating that. so that's when i stopped doing that and started doing communications. and so i've written, you know, over the last ten years now, you know, maybe in two, three million words on the subject. but it's been, you know, for an audience that is very politically engaged. and i wanted to take the opportunity in this book, which is all q&a format, general audience, to write something for the general audience and explain to them why they need to know about climate change, why you all need to know about climate change, whether or not you're going to be politically active or not. and so i go through how climate change is going to impact you and your families over the next 25 years as much as the internet

has in the last 25 years. and if you had known 25 years ago what was coming, you would have been very well positioned to take advantage of all the changes that occurred, and you might have studied different things at school or told your kids to study different things in schools. and we are now in the unprecedented situation in the history of civilization where we know with a very high degree of certainty how things are going to play out over the next few decades. the question of whether we can make -- avert catastrophe, you know, starting mid century and beyond, that's still in our control. but how things play out in the next few decades, i think, is increasingly clear. so we know -- i know, i try to write about a lot, is, you know, we're in the coastal property value bubble. a trillion dollar bubble supported by all of your taxpayer dollars in the form of

the national flood insurance program which to the tune of over a trillion dollars -- half of which is florida. and sooner or later there's going to be a big storm in south florida, and a lot of people are going to go bankrupt, and you and i will bail them all out. and decisions will be made at some point we're simply not going to keep doing that, and banks won't give 30-year mortgages to homes that are going to ultimately be underwater or destroyed in a big storm surge like hurricane sandy. to people need to know now -- so people need to know now, sometime in the next two decades, the smart money is going to get out of coastal property. and the question of whether you want to be the smart money or whether you want to be the other kind, you know, is one thing i address in the book, you know? where are you or your parents going to retire? normally people want to retire in warm and desirable locations. all of those warm and desirable locations are going to become hot and undesirable over the

course of the next few decades. what should your kids study in school if they want to be employable in a globally-warmed world? well, unfortunately, you know, there are a whole bunch of skill sets that world is going to need more and more in the coming decades. and if you are knowledgeable in them, you are going to be in a much better position than if you're not. that's sort of the main reason. the other reason i got excited about the book is while i was researching the book, i uncovered something i didn't know before which is that carbon dioxide itself -- which is the heat-trapping gas caused by the burning of fossil fuels that is trapping heat and warming the planet -- is actually, causes, harms human cognition at levels

that we're actually exposed to in this room right now. the outdoor level co2 is only 400 parts per million, maybe a little higher in a city with a lot of traffic. indoors it goes up because we all exhale co2. and as it turns out, i brought a co2 monitor with me just so we would know what the co2 levels are. this is an indoor air quality monitor. the co2 levels right now in the room are 1100 parts per million which is not unusual in a room where you put a lot of people. because we're all -- this room was not designed for this number of people, and over time the exhale will raise the co2 levels. just literally two weeks ago harvard university school of public health came out with a study which said that at 950 parts per million people's higher cognition is degraded in key levels. and i wrote about this on the web site, and i had gotten to

talk to the, to the author, and some other authors earlier than that. so people need to know that, that they should be concerned about indoor levels of co2. and since outdoor levels of co2 keep rising and they are the baseline for the indoor because that's what we use, fresh air, to lower indoor co2 levels, people should be concerned about that. >> well, let's turn to something esther mentioned which was that this was also a well-timed event because there's going to be a big climate summit in paris where over 190 governments are going to make pledges to mitigate carbon pollution and other pollutants in their own countries. but i wanted to talk to both of you and just to say, you know, how does all that discussion cabot paris translate -- discussion about paris translate to a personal level?

what is it we should know about paris, and is that the end game? is what gets determined in the next three weeks, is that going to be the path that we're on for the rest of at least our lifetime? >> well, i would say i hope not, because i think 156 countries have already made pledges as to what they intend to achieve with respect to their own carbon emissions subsequent to the conference. and these, they're fairly ambitious relative to where the countries are. for example, china saying that they're going to stabilize within 15 years their emissions, india saying they're going to reduce emissions as a share of gdp, the u.s. and so forth. but you add them up, if i'm doing the math correctly, if all of the countries did exactly what they said, we wouldn't come close to reducing emissions to the level that we need to get to. i mean, roughly speaking i think

it's fair to say that emissions need to come down within 20 years by about 40%. so right now global co2 emissions are 32 billion tons, that means they need to be at 20 billion tons within 20 years and maybe at 7 billion tons by 2050. and so we don't come -- we don't even come close. even with all those pledges. so that, therefore, i see this conference as a way through which, yes, we do see steps forward, but we need to really push hard and explain to people that what's going to be achieved at this conference is really only a first step that needs to be pushed into a much more aggressive path post-paris. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. so this is, this is the 21st conference of parties of the u.n. framework convention on

climate change. these are acronyms that you'll be seeing in the paper, and it will be the first one which the world takes us off the business-as-usual emissions path which would have been catastrophic, which would have taken us to maybe 10 degrees fahrenheit warming over the course of the next century. but as bob says, we've got a long way to go because in order to stabilize at levels that people consider safe which is, let's say, under 4 degrees fahrenheit, you need to take the entire world to zero total co2 emissions from deforestation, from burning coal oil and natural gas. you name it, it's got to go to zero by the end of the century which, needless to say, is going to be the greatest challenge ever undertaken by the human race. and that means every decade we've got to drop down more and

more. the targets for paris all end in 2030. targets within the 2030 time frame, and some of them are impressive. for instance, the game-breaking deal that was made last november between the u.s. and china got china for the first time to cap emissions, say they would cap co2 emissions by 2030, if not sooner, and that was a big deal because they were first major growing, developing country to put an emissions target on table. so i am very optimistic about that. but it is, certainly, only the first step, you know? it's, i think, like churchill said after the victory in north africa against rommel's tanks, he said it's not the end, and it's not the beginning of the end, it's the end of beginning. we are finally, as a world, acknowledging we have to take dramatic steps to get off of business as usual. but it's just the first of what

will be decade by decade a lot of big steps. >> so kind of a starting -- rather than a finish line. >> yeah. and it's good to be in the game. you know, 25 years ago scientists said, you know, this is a problem, do something about it, and every five years they keep saying that, and, you know, we're like a patient that, you know, has been smoking, and each year our cough gets a little worse, but we don't do anything about it. so, yeah, we have consequences for dawdling for 25 years. but at least the world is engaged. >> well, and so, bob, you've addressed some of these questions, right? you've laid out a plan for how we can get to this incredible reduction in carbon and other pollutants down to a level that will keep us at a mild cough, to use joe's turn of phrase. >> right. >> but why haven't we done it? if there's a path and we know that it'll work, what do you think has kept us from going

forward on that path? >> well, there's a few reasons. number one is just inertia. i mean, just moving anything, i mean, asthmas e as joe -- as massive as joe just talked about is a gigantic project. number two, there is the still-dominant perception -- which i hope my book will help move the other way -- that, you know, to do so entails huge economic costs that people don't want to pay, you know? so whatever else, yeah, okay, i care about climate change, but we also care about jobs, we care about economy growing and, you know, so if you're going to have a trade-off between economic well being and climate, i'll take economic well being. so what i'm trying to show is that the two things actually go together. number three, let's face it, there are big oil companies and other fossil fuel companies, and they are going to take a massive hit. there's just no way around it,

they will. i want to say, though, that the amount -- the magnitude of their losses, while huge, are not as big as generally advertised. if i can just do a little bit of economic-y stuff, just very quickly. okay, so the best estimate of how much fossil fuels is going to have to stay in the ground that private companies own is $3 trillion. $3 trillion is real money, okay? that's real money, no question about it. but even if we say it's going to, it's going to depreciate over 20 years, now we're down to $150 billion a year, okay? that's still real money, but just by comparison, you know, total asset values in the whole global economy are, like, $40 billion. so we're looking at -- 240 billion. so we're looking at something like one-half of 1% per year. this is manageable. on top of that, if we think about during the great recession when the housing bubble burst,

losses to u.s. households in one year was 17 trillion. so we're talking about 150 billion, that's one one-one-hundredth of loss in a year. they can adjust. so you have smart investors like, for example, warren buffett who is moving, he moved $30 billion into green energy. yes, he has an altruistic motive, but that's not his main motive, let's face it. so over time the oil industry is going to have to face demise and death. the other big barrier, i think, there are going to be job opportunities expanding overall through green investments. but again, let's face it, coal miners are going to lose their jobs. there are not going to be jobs for coal miners and in the fossil fuel industry. so what we need to do there is we need to have what the late,

great labor leader called a superfund for workers. we have a superfund for dirt, he said, you know, for environmental clean-ups, we need a superfund for workers, and that has to be part of the overall transition. >> well, and, joe, i want to ask you this because it also seems there are also great costs that aren't being monetized when we talk about the impact of achieving these emissions cuts which are health impacts. and more and more attention has been given to that. as a climate communications expert, is that also something that we need to do more to factor into the cost and benefits of mitigating climate change? ..

>> >> for not turning the entire breadbasket of the united states into a dust bowl the has the into allocable cost for having

sea levels rises 7 feet then keep rising the cost of inaction is incalculable. it is phenomenally large but the cost of action is relatively low. you need a lot of people to put in insulation to install solar panels. we only have 100,000 coal miners. to blow up of mountaintops. so that has begun the smart money realizes it will happen in real and people to stop are just market wider

not hedged against the risk. so i don't think no question we leave them in the ground and not into the market but in now in time to have some of the worst impact's. betty much worse cost to deal with. >> i will interject a third person. bill gates is starting to

talk more about climate and one of the thing is he said in recent weeks or months that there needs to be a huge jackson -- injection into technology. and should be done by the government into its sheave these cuts and to do projects like this. the big conventions the money is gone but now has to go to the government. with this new technology to reach the level of what is needed by and curious to get your take. >> with all due respect i completely disagree.

technology will help. that is great but the calculations in my book based on the studies, it is based on cost levels of existent current technologies. it is straightforward technology with ellie delighting one dash to improve the systems and i was just in india at 23 percent of all energy consumption is from cooking and what does that mean? they collect wood and burn wood at which emits emissions at the level of coal. as opposed to a stowe of if

you fire those with solar energy that is existing, you will make massive improvements of emission reductions. the average solar cost according to bloomberg has come down 87% in seven years. another five or six years it will be at cost parity with also fuels to generate electricity with wind, geothermal, hydropower or already at a cost parity with u.s. department of energy figures. citizens though fully answer. in those terms we will have more delays that we don't have time for. >> you agree? train wreck yes.

how many people read climate progress? we have to get that number up. [laughter] i do use bill gates products but he is thrown -- wrong in disregard it comes down dramatically solar king a 99% and keeps coming down. i ran the office that did research and development with clean energy technology proposal i am quite familiar but all of these became because of a learning curve doubling capacity as cost comes down with the economy

of scale, people will cite a wind turbine better to manufacture solar panels better. to achieve a certain level of market penetration so the world has completely changed. we need smart programs to increase deployment. those renewable standards have been so popular.

the way bill gates got the money is not by doing math and research and development for the perfect piece of software. n to use that money to increase sales. and he should know better. [laughter] >> and push for research and development and this is the real innovation perot as the department of energy i am curious to know how the balance plays out between

public and private entrepreneurship and they are great institutions to have a body of expertise to do agree to work. and we toiled away helping to bring the cost of solar down when no one was investing and though world owes a great deal of things to germany into renewable energy and the same for china. in the ideal world of reprice carpenter reflect how harmful that was then the marketplace would realize there is money to be made to developing low carbon technology then r&d would be the right amount

obviously with a lack of price on carbon so the entire world is committed to replacing the entire fossil fuel infrastructure then all of the people there is a lot of money to be made and one can expect. >> we have an economist here. is a realistic gore effective? >> definitely if people understand what we talk about. there are two ways to price

carbon and one is to have a tax if you raise them high enough people will be discouraged from using it. the second is to have a cap like the state of california. with the utilities with the area around carbon if they exceed then they have to pay. but just as a matter of principle talking about market solutions and isn't able to recognize the harm done by burning coal or oil or natural gas. but quite the contrary also

fuel production and that is to encourage consumption. if you look at the history of development of technology in this country, basically since its founding but over the last 50 years specifically, i they come out of government labs. one obvious example that bill gates benefit it become the internet was developed in the department of defense. 35 years before it had anyone thought of it for commercial purpose. so yes with that new

innovative technology there is no investor to reap the benefits so there is no incentive for that deep level investment. but at the same time we don't need to wait we have great technologies that need to be pushed out. >> what can people do to act now? for some people the ada to attack climate change seems insurmountable. it is difficult for them to figure out to take part in

this revolution. is their advice or what you would recommend to help. us to these situations? end with the climate change denier. with the "wall street journal" i say step one is you have to force these people to realize they don't know what they're talking about. and eve then 98.9% turnout to be wrong or are overstating the case, it

just on the insurance principle. it to face that ecological catastrophe or a reasonable probability. the argument in my book says this is how much we have to pay - - pay for insurance. and it is a total destruction and there are things that we can do on the individual basis. putting up the building that is net zero. every building should be. the cost is somewhat higher to start off but you gets energy-saving its to restructure financing those

kinds of innovations that we started our own green energy company to promote energy efficiency. or you can start your own or put solar panels on your roof. it is all there. >> what is the message to take away? it is serious and will affect them and have serious consequences and during the coming years. and to use that analogy the lgbt community and with

clarity quality was considered a political losing issue and people felt uncomfortable with the news and public. i don't generally walk up to people to start talking about climate's we let 25 years ago to understand the issue and to talk about it and in the book how low do you talk about someone who presents - - presents the argument that was made so popular? people need to know how to engage that and it is only for their own self-interest.

certain decisions are highly consequential and would beew;y

. >> we have determined economics called the resources curse. first to the fact a lot of countries other oil-rich actually do not perform better economically than those that are resource for. if you compare that country's those that are not oil exporters on average in terms of economic growth and living standards one of them

is libya's the other is south korea psaltery and has zero oil but has done better in terms of economic performance? obviously. that country's need oil to raise living standards. quite the contrary you can do just fine without oil or better but it is a hard transition. that is what i think. >> i look at it as a physicist we know what the future is. we're not that self-destructive to be progressively worse with a catastrophic impact but i

know we are going to use o. spending a great deal of money on renewable energy with the end point. it is difficult to worry a great deal about the cost of doing something that is inevitable. and and doing something that is terribly bad. that is so we're trying to do to undo the original unintentional state. but for 25 years we have known it has that impact. what we're doing now is immoral. because like china they want to be the leader of wind power and solar power.

in a country that wants to be successful this century has to be an early adopter. >> thanks for the work that you do. we hear about actions we can take as individuals whether public transit or going begin but i don't hear much what we should do if we can put money toward the problem. there is a lot of options. would you advocate as the most effective? >> i think everybody over

the course over the next 30 years when they see what plays out will be asking did i do enough? so the old-line from what did you do? what did you do about leaving us a world that was not a ruined planet to allow any of us to have any chance. we will not be the greatest generation or we will be the exact opposite. i think people with money in this permit is incumbent upon them to figure out there best leverage point there are groups to support support, a technology technology, nonprofit organizations to help electrify villages in africa there are tremendous things that you can do and by a bunch of copies of my book.

[laughter] everyone has to find the intersection with their money and anyone who was employed a lot of their money into solving this problem is acting in a way they will regret in the coming decades. >> we have a strong divestment movement that is growing with reinvestment in clean energy. i know this is becoming important but that level level, the entities that have undertaken that is in that couple trillion. they're serious investors

and overtime this will be fundamental similar to the way the campaign against smoking transformed behavior if you invest and make money off of fossil fuels you are bad and we have to recognize that. at the same time investing in clean energy is the new wave. it is time to make the oil and coal and natural gas companies realize this is not the place where people want to make money for our religious institutions institutions, universities and individual investors put your money into clean energy. >> you mentioned options is there one that is the most effective? >> we're at the point where the american public is that

the head of its congress. i am always a big fan to be politically active. we're at the point now where politics in this country is degraded on this particular point because it is an existential threat to the humanity and our children, i think it is time to act like this single issue voters for those who are effective in getting what they want done. so yes. getting involved. not just at the federal level. the president and the epa put forward a clean power plant that puts in standards for carbon dioxide emissions for all power plants is an integral part for him to

make a commitment to reduce commissions to get china to come to the table. the current senate majority leader has been trying to convince the state's two not to enact a state plan to achieve those targets for growth state by state there will be battles fought in the legislature the fossil fuel companies spend a staggering sum of money, at least $1 billion for the 2016 election to keep senators. i a understand where they get their money and they spend it the way they do. sort of. because they have families but it is incumbent on the people who see the bigger

picture to put up the money against such insanity. >> we are a little bit over time. >> your point about the false spier of economic collapse is trumped up also there is peter of collective action. day you have any advice i have dinner next week with my brother-in-law who fears or why that is necessary? >> first of all, when i say i think we need to spend at the level of 1.5% of u.s. gdp, to be clearer not all public and fact most of it is private. the center for american

progress ahead of the centers said how much? you have to tell us. . .

>> and of course there will be government abuses like there always are, but there's also a lot of government success. and against the fossil fuel companies that are a massive barrier. so if we want to say just leave it to the private market, well, the fossil fuel companies are going to dominate, and we will destroy the planet. >> and my good friend baracken and i have -- bracken have discussed this in times. i'm going to jump to the answer -- [laughter] which is we know what the future is. we know what the future is. the future where we don't solve the problem is a future where the government's doing everything. it's telling you where to live. it's going to have to do triage on all the major cities, because they're all going to be flooded out. we're not going to be able to save the florida keys. can you save miami?

it turns out you can't, it's on porous limestone, so you can't build seawalls for it. can you save galveston? no. houston? maybe. new orleans? that's going to be a very big question. someone's going to have to make a decision as to where that money gets spent, where you can live, where you can't live. the only reason that people are i -- are afraid of the government action needed to solve this problem is because they don't believe there's a problem. if they actually believe that the world was suffering from a progressive and fatal disease, if, for instance, their daughter were diagnosed with a utter hi treatable -- utterly treatable but otherwise progressive and fatal decide and 99 doctors told them if you do these straightforward, not simple but straightforward steps, your daughter will be cured, and if you don't, she's going to live in terrible agony, get worse and worse decade after decade, none of them would go searching for

that last doctor to convince them, oh, this is fine, happens to everybody. so it is the denial of the reality of the science that drives all of the other politics. >> hi. thank you. i broke it. [laughter] okay, perfect. first, i would just like to thank the three of you for putting on this very informative talk, and i've heard a lot of talk tonight about how to slow climate change and what we could do now. in light of this u.n. climate meetings and talks happening, are we starting to look at the other side? are all these countries coming together and starting to think

about what's going to happen 25 years from now, 50 years from now 1-rbgs 00 years from now -- 100 years from now, what's happening with these pacific islands who don't have these governments, with fema who can bail them out again and again and again? have there started to be any talks? >> you mean about protecting people against the impact as opposed to solving the problem? >> right. just thinking realistically. >> yeah. i mean, obviously, both things are going on. but, you know, as we're suggesting, it's certainly not going to -- if we're just going to protect against the impacts, it's almost an impossible task, or let's say it is an impossible task. so at the same time, yes, we want to create protection against the impacts. there is still enough time, as joe was just saying, there is still enough time to transform our energy system starting now. and to i would say, of course,

we want to create modes of protection. but that's limited. so the investments need to take place now to begin greening the global economy which happens to be the title of my book, so i hope you all take it too. you know, again, i just got back from india a week and a half ago, and i was giving lectures on this subject. and the level of recognition of the problem in india even among, you know, university intellectual types is very low. it's not like they were disagreeing with me, it's like they just haven't given it much thought, and they think about a lot of other things that affect human well being. but what we need to be able to convince people is in india -- in india it happens to be a very important case because, you know, we're looking at a billion and a half people. and if india grows at 5, 6% a year, they're going to increase their emissions fivefold in the next 20 years.

so what we need to do is tell people everywhere, india, the united states, fiji islands, we have a solution, we need to seize that opportunity now. >> so thanks for your ideas. i've learn add new new ways -- learned a few new ways to think about this and talk to people about it. i want to push back on the idea that buildings should be zero energy. for the reasons you talked about, ventilation and comfort conditioning, buildings that are intense occupancy with people or that have certain uses like laboratories, very intensive, they can't be. they will never get to zero energy. they're going to need some kind of exterior energy source. some of them do it by buying green energy credits, that's maybe one way to do it -- >> yeah, let me just say net energy, net zero. some of the year, yeah, you can

buy energy and, by the way, it could be renewable. >> we'll have that argument another time. >> okay. >> the real question i want to ask is about i think you made the case on the economic, broader economic basis there's a big upside. but i hear a lot of people, what i'd say the crotchty view, gee, i'm going to have to live in a smaller house, i'm going to have to drive a smaller car, i won't be able to have as big a lawn. so i have some thoughts about what the person, on the personal level what the upsides are. but i'm interested in your ideas about the response to that. oh, i'm going to have to wear sweaters, more sweaters. >> like jimmy carter, yeah. >> so what's the -- >> well, i mean, there is a very strong position that a lot of people have that i respect, i disagree with that generalizes from your point. it's called, you know, no growth or anti-growth meaning that, you know, we are simply consuming too much and that the solution

is to consume less. i just don't find that to be true. i mean, there's a lot of reasons maybe that we should consume less. i probably consume way more than i have to. on the other hand, if you think about a, you know, 100% renewable energy economy, we consume a lot of energy, and maybe we shouldn't have big cars for other reasons or so much air-conditioning for other reasons, or we shouldn't go to so many conferences in airplanes for other reasons, but, you know, emissions shouldn't be the problem. so, you know, the degrowth or anti-growth position, you know, suggests that, you know, we have to, like, wear the hair shirt and to with less. i don't think that that's really -- a, it's not going to solve the climate problem now. i don't really think it's necessary. i think -- and also when i think about it, again in the global

picture, yeah, there's a lot of people like me that consume too much. but most of the people in the world i don't think consume too much. and so i'm not about to lecture them and say, you know, by the way, you're never going to be able to raise your level of standard of living through energy. >> sorry, no -- >> just to say, you know, i tend to belief that we're going to go through two phases. there's a phase where we can do tremendous missions reductions with technology, renewable energy, energy efficiency. and that's going to get us very far. and that, we could do that for 10, 20, maybe 30 years. at some point though, we're going to recognize that we do have to go to zero, and that's a great challenge. and that will, i think, necessitate people changing their behavior. i don't usually go around telling people to change their behavior because it doesn't have any, you know, impact at all. only desperation is going to get

people to change their behavior, and we're going to get desperate. i would think we're probably going to get desperate sometime around the year 2030. and then all things are possible just as they were, you know, during world war ii where, you know, people did remarkable things, things that we don't even contemplate today. i think, however, what i would say to a crotchty friend of yours, things i've written on the web site is right now we have created the most perfect and most immoral ponzi scheme in the history of the universe, which is to say that we are living beyond our means. we are robbing our children and our grandchildren of soils, fisheries, fresh water, arable land and a livable atmosphere. we're doing that because no one is stopping us because the only people who could stop us is us. so this is a classic ponzi

scheme. we are hoping that there's another 10-20 years that we can enjoy this unsustainable lifestyle, and then -- [speaking in native tongue] that's the mentality that the entire world is living under, and the rich countries particularly. so your friend is simply in a massive amount of denial, and i can understand. he can want to say, well, let other people deal with it. the problem is when everybody says let other people deal with it, then people who have to deal with it are our children and our grandchildren, and people who contributed to this problem not at all. so, you know, i think we move into the realm of morality here. and it is just, you know, staggeringly immoral for us to continue to rob future generations of the ability to live the way we live simply pause we're so greedy -- because we're so greedy and myopic, we want to keep doing it for another 10 or 20 years despite

what the overwhelming scientific evidence says. >> just to ask you to follow up, is it all sacrifice though? i think when we talk about research and development in technology, our lives, things in our lives have become much more energy efficient, use much less energy, and for the most part many people don't even notice. i can't remember the statistic about refrigerators, but there's a statistic about how they have become vastly more energy -- they're still huge energy hogs, but they've become vastly more energy efficient, and it's not as though people's food is less cold than the 20 years ago. so is it all bad? or is -- >> i don't think -- >> -- changes that are beneficial and people won't even necessarily notice? >> what's bad is doing nothing. and i realize that that's an abstract concept for people who haven't, you know, internalized what's to come. but, you know, again, as i say, as a physicist it's very hard for me to say that the actions

we need to take to undo the mess that we are creating is somehow sacrifice. and i can certainly say as the parent of an eight and a half year old, sacrifice is an odd word. i could blow all my money on vacations and not save money for her education or health care. but it would never dawn on me to do that, and i would never sacrifice to do that. i will say that people, you know, it's easy for us to say it's a sacrifice when what we're doing is imposing unbelievable sacrifice on future generations. i mean, we're going to have ten billion people by mid century. and if we take away a third of the arable land and the fresh water and the fisheries and the coral reefs which sustain a quarter of, you know, the fish population, we take all those things away, we're just imposing on them, you know, a hunger games type situation. so they don't even get the

choice. it is a forced sacrifice we're imposing on them so that we can continue to live in a way that i think, by the way, most people would say, yes, the changes between what it takes to be sustainable and what we're doing now would hardly be noticeable for most people. and i, you know, i use an example how much of your travel is actually necessary versus discretionary? you know? it's a simple question. we do a lot of things we take for granted that if we went into the world war ii wartime footing, which we will in probably a couple decades, we won't take for granted at all. >> just, if i could just disagree a little bit -- [laughter] you know, we have models that, you know, germany. germany is a country where the average living standard is more or less the same as here, but

their emissions level at present are about half of u.s. they operate at twice the level of energy efficiency than we do. and moreover, germany is, you know, their energy plan or, you know, they're planning to cut their emissions again in half, and they cut -- the new buildings are all going to be near zero. that's the plan. it may not happen, but that's the plan. i see that as a good model. i don't see why the u.s. couldn't be in 20 years where germany is today without, basically, any sacrifices. you know? when i say more jobs, i mean there are going to be decent jobs with good incomes. so, yes, there will be a transformation in the nature of consumption starting with the consumption of energy, but once we undertake that transformation, i don't see that we would have to necessarily also undertake major changes in

the level of consumption as it affects energy. now, we have been talking all about energy, but joe mentioned agriculture. that's a different story. so, you know, roughly 80% of greenhouse gas emissions, if you believe the world bank, are from energy sources. but that still leaves 20% from everything else. the biggest single additional source is agriculture. and it's true that we cannot keep running an agricultural system that, first of all, is eliminating the carbon sinks of forests. so how do we maintain an agricultural system that enables people to be fed without destroying this, the forests as a resource? >> that's going to be a whole other panel, probably. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. i see people standing, and i apologize for making you wait, but i want to hear your questions. >> what went wrong and what went

well with -- [inaudible] a few years ago united arab emirates announced this tremendous project of having a town, a city of about 50,000 people with zero net, and they were planning on even having a zero net construction which, as a civil engineer, i can't comprehend how can you have equipment building things without any emissions. but i'm just wondering your familiarity with are there lessons learned? what went well, what didn't go so well? can anything be applied elsewhere? >> i'm not familiar with that example, but i'll just mention briefly another. there is, actually, a town in germany -- it's a rural town -- that has, actually, operating at zero emissions right now. so that one went well. >> well, i think, you know, nasdar, i think, is indicative of an approach that, frankly, a

lot of the arab countries that have oil, the oil countries have been pursuing which is to try to invest very heavily in sort of big renewable projects, and i don't think there's anything wrong with that. you know, what all of us are going to ultimately have to do is, you know, it's going to be incremental. and, you know, i think -- and i just wanted to just, you know, briefly say, you know, if i were, if the people at green building conference nearby here were to redesign a building to make it very low energy and then use renewable to take it down to zero, you'd actually much rather be working in that building than in the building you're working now, because it would have more daylight, fresher air and so on and so on. so, you know, what we're going to have to do i think mostly is prize, innovation and prize the

move to zero. i think it's realizing we're going to zero that is the big paradigm shift. once you realize where the end state is, then all the things that you have to do to get there aren't sacrifices, they're just the things that you have to do. and many of them will be very good. and i think most people will be quite happier in 50 years if we were to pursue them than if -- and i, you know, compared to not pursuing them, i think it's very safe to say. >> hi there. joe, you mentioned the disinformation campaign and that's, frankly, what i find most offensive about this topic, that anyone who's doing that but particularly politicians as well as the fossil fuel industry, as you mentioned. to me, it's the opposite of finish the other side of the coin of yelling fire in a crowded building, disabling the fire alarm when there's a fire.

given that new york is considering taking action against exxon for concealing past research that indicated that climate change was a reality, do you, do either of you have thoughts on the future of disinformation campaigns both in the political arena and in the fossil fuel arena? >> well, i just think we have to just fight them, you know? it's great that this information has come out with respect to exxon and other companies, and it's great that legal action is being taken. as i said, i was on a panel just last night with somebody who was not a climate denier, but basically said, you know, we don't have to worry about that, and let's just keep building up all our fossil fuel resources in the united states. so there are, there are these people out there. i was with one last night. so we just -- i don't know what else to do other than just keep confronting them with the

evidence and fighting against it. >> well, just to, you know, the exxon case, you know, people should read about it if they haven't. it's been written about in the l.a. times and exxonmobil has known literally since the 1970s through their own scientists' research and in working with government scientists that carbon dioxide, the product, the output of burning their product, is, you know, can cause catastrophic impacts. and instead of joining the call for action which really could have made a difference, they decided to launch what was for them, they were the largest funder of disinformation until david and charles koch came along. so, you know, first of all, again, people who have the financial resources and understand this issue have to, you know, help fund information. i don't think there's any question about that. you know, it's -- i hope we get more state attorney generals who

pursue the kind of case that the new york attorney general is pursuing. very comparable to what happened with the tobacco case. and we can at least learn that who knew what when, and perhaps people can be shamed into a certain behavior change. of but, you know, money and profits drive behavior, and the tobacco companies haven't gone away. and people do still smoke. so, you know, i think, again, it's just incumbent upon everyone to be part of the information campaign. and that requires everyday people who would rather not talk about this subject becoming better at learning how to talk about it and then going out and talking about it. >> so, robert and joseph, you're clearly both brilliant scholars, and every bit of this has been really informative.

i've just spent a couple of days at the conference downtown, or and i've always recently committed to changing my career path out of i.t. into the green economy. and i'm looking at a lot of things. there were really cool commercial and residential and life change ideas at that conference. one thing that i'm really surprised about is that a couple of people specifically asked what can we as individuals do? it's not going to fix the problem completely, but what as individuals can we do to make an impact in the short order? some of us aren't young to go to the little -- aren't going to go to the little electric car or completely switch over to solar. it's my understanding that over 30% of our electric energy consumption in the united states is residential. so is there a reason? or how do you feel about home energy auditing and really looking at the envelope and

ceiling and insulation and etc. what are your thoughts on that? >> great. absolutely critical. raising, i mean, raising efficiency standards in all buildings, residential, commercial, you know, buildings are the biggest consumer of energy. and like i said, i myself started a business that, actually, we started out focused on, just on raising efficiency standards. so, but, you know, you say what can people do, well, you just answered the question yourself, because you said you were switching your career. that's a big deal, isn't it? >> i'm trying to figure out what to do in that, and i'm really looking at starting up a company that does energy auditing and native plants with disadvantage -- or disabled americans, the handicapped in general. >> that's fantastic. i mean, i should say, you know, at my university, i mean, this is a cultural transformation. a lot of the young people, they

want to do something -- i know you're not a college student. [laughter] >> thank you for calling me young. >> but, you know, people want to do something cool, they want to do something in the green energy area. this is, like, pervasive. and, you know, if people -- i also have, i know a young man very well who works for schlumberger, and he's done very well in energy and oil exploration, and he's quitting his job. and he says he doesn't want to do it anymore. is well, so these kinds of decisions are seeping into the culture, you know, in terms of making, as joe said, making moral choices. these are the choices before us. how exactly each of us does it going to be different. but, you know, cob graphlations on your -- congratulations on your new opportunities. [laughter] >> yeah. you know, i talk about this a little bit at the end of the book. i don't go around, you know, telling people, you know, to reduce their energy consumption.

i think people can live more efficiently. i mean, there are three -- the three big contributors are how much you fly, and if you fly a lott, that's a big emitter, and you want to figure out how to do more of that. i certainly have -- teleconference and do more of that. your car is a big emitter, and you'll want to have a hybrid, and then you'll want an electric car. i think come 2020 is when the real revolution is going to take off in electric car, because you're going to see just an explosion in the technology. in your home, obviously, i would urge everyone to get an audit. there's a lot of little and easy things to do. led lighting is certainly the future of lighting, and the idea that we should have the same color light all day long, that's not how we involved. we involved over -- evolved over a changing spectrum of light,

and you can get led lights that will do that. i was there for the open plenary. james cameron spoke. there's no question that your diet is a very big contributor to your net emissions. if everyone ate healthier, then greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture would go down substantially. now, that healthy diet does mean less meat, you know? and that is, obviously, a choice people have to make. but to the extent that one wants to make a choice to eat healthy for yourself and for the planet, that's a simple choice. i will say in the scenario where we don't solve global warming, it's very clear that, you know, 50, 60, 70 years from now people will not be eating much meat, because there won't be the land. it takes 20 times as much water and acreage, you know, per calorie delivered for meat-based diet as it does for, you know, a plant-based diet. so there just won't be the

arable land and the fresh water to do it. so we're going to be restricting everyone else's choices if we don't get our act together quite soon. >> you guys know what you're going to write about next. agriculture, you heard it here first. our last question before our book signing. thank you for your patience. >> i just had a question about the aviation industry. is so how long do you think it'll take for this to reach the aviation industry, and what steps can airlines and air manufacturers such as airbus and boeing take to recycle quickly? >> so, you mean, how to redesign the planes? >> i mean, what solutions -- >> well, two solutions are having more efficient planes, and i did see some, an article recently about raising energy efficiency in planes. and the second thing is to design planes that can run on bio energy, on alternative liquid fuels.

now, not all bio, you know, corn ethanol is not, is not going to generate any reduction in emissions relative to burning petroleum. but bio energy from other sources such as switch grass or waste products in agriculture, if they can be used in planes as a liquid energy source, that's going to engender reductions in emissions from aviation. >> yeah. aviation is certainly one of the biggest challenges, because it's not something that you can electrify. i think a lot of the ground transportation will be electrified, certainly, you know, consumer -- your vehicles will ultimately be principally electric. but we're going to need this next generation of fuels. there's no question that corn ethanol and -- using crops to make fuel that you burn in the engines is a barely sensible thing to do in our current

world. you add three billion people and reduce arable land and fresh water, and we're not going to be burning 40% of the u.s. corn crop in our engines. so there will be this residual of things where it's very hard to remace liquid -- replace liquid fuels, and we will have a generation of fuels built around algae and switch grass and things that don't use a lot of land and water. and that's a good place to continue doing r&d. >> i think you just made people feel really guilty about flying home for thanksgiving. [laughter] but maybe that's good, or right? >> it's good to think about. >> well, thank you so much. i am neither an economist or a physicist, but it is really just a pleasure to talk to you and get your perspective, and i hope everyone here feels the same way, so please join me in thanking our -- [applause] >> thank you so much for our wonderful and informative panel tonight, and thank you to all of you for being a great audience.

we will now be moving into the book signing. we also have both books available for sale over here with amelia, so please feel free to visit her and just go ahead and line up along the back wall. we'll be signing books over here in this corner. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's a look at what's on prime time tonight. at 6:30 p.m. each, brian kilmeade and don yeager talk about thomas jefferson and the tripoli pirates. then at 7:30, a look at the life

and career of ruth bader ginsburg. at 8:45, or british historian anthony beaver on the battle of the bulge. then on "after words," nurse and new york times columnist teresa brown talks about patient care. and at 11, whether hate crimes should be treated as domestic terrorism. that all happens tonight. and fist up on booktv -- first up on booktv in prime time, brian kilmeade and don yeager. [inaudible conversations]

>> like coming to court. [laughter] you afraid of the audience, brian? >> [inaudible] >> oh, all right. [laughter] actually, he doesn't want to be seep on the same stage with me. -- seen on the same stage with me. [laughter] >> which he is, by the way. >> five minutes. see what you learn? good afternoon. welcome to the heritage foundation and our douglas and sarah allison auditorium. we, of course, welcome those who join us on our heritage.org web site on all of these occasions. would ask our good friends here in-house if you'll check to make sure cell phones have been muted as we begin and, of course, our internet viewers are welcome at any time to send questions or comments. and one bit of commercial,

you'll notice that if you are not on brian's mailing list for his e-mails, we have cards out in front that you can sign up and join for the kill mead connection. hosting our discussion today is genevieve woods, senior fellow in communications here at heritage. she also serves as senior contributor to the daily signal, heritage's multimedia news organization. please join me in welcoming genevieve. [applause] thank you, john,. very much. welcome, everybody, to heritage. on behalf of jim jim demint, my 250 some odd colleagues here and around the country, we are delighted to have you with us for this event. brian kilmeade is no stranger, i'm sure, to many of you. he's a co-host of fox and friends, the number one news program in the morning on cable television. great credit to him and his two co-hosts. brian's known for being able to interview just about any type of

person; politicians, entertainers, sports celebrities, some of the past victims -- interviewees, i should say, president george w. bush, michael jordan and, of course, simon cowell as well. but apparently, being on television three hours a day is not enough for brian kilmeade, because when that show is over, brian enters the radio studio where he hosts a show for another three hours each day monday through friday. it's a program that's on over 140 stations across the country, so brian is prolific when it comes that talking, but also when it comes to writing. he is now the author of four books, two of his first three books ended up on "the new york times" bestseller list, one of those was george washington's secret six. and seeing the success of that book, he and his co-author dan yeager teamed up to bring us the story of another interesting but not so well known one from american history, and that's the book he's going to talk about

today which is thomas jefferson and the tripoli pirates which is the forgotten war that changed american history. as i think you'll learn from brian's remarks, there is a lot we can learn from history, a lot of things that today's leaders such as president obama might be able to learn from history and from people like thomas jefferson, and we welcome brian now to share that story. brian kilmeade. [applause] >> genevieve, thank you very much. you, obviously, could give the speech yourself, and we've got you galleys. you are eligible for a true hardback copy for, at the very least, a discount, if not the full price. i'm privileged to be here in front of you. it's also good luck because the first event i had for george washington's secret six was also at heritage, and that ended up being a bestseller for 19 week ands then the paperback for eight weeks, or so it was an

unbelievable run that shocked everybody. and it's not because i'm cute, because i am -- [laughter] it's because i think fundamentally america's a very patriotic place. there's some people wearing the group form, obviously, they're patriotic. if you're running for office, you're patriotic, you believe in the country. but for the average truck driver, for the teacher, for the landscaper to be picking up this book, george washington's secret six, and talking to me about the spies and the reason why it resonated in my humble opinion is because we know how great george washington is, we know about benjamin franklin, thomas jefferson and our founding fathers. we read great biographies, and we still society don't know everything about them. but what most of you know is we have no country without the so-called everyday americans doing extraordinary things to keep the country going, the spirit alive, fighting the wars, getting the economy going from the ground up. so i was able to talk about a bartender -- i can relate to that. a long shoreman, oh, yeah, that

makes sense. i could tell you about a guy that was a newspaper guy, if i could tell you about a farmer, i can relate to that. and the next thing you know they did extraordinary things with the leadership of george washington. so that book had some success. i had that idea in 1989 as they exposed this to me, being a long island resident, i was able to see, feel and touch this story and thought why couldn't with all my ridiculous field trips to go see an organ at radio city city or a big garden in the east of long island or a winery -- which is great for kids to see in grammar school -- why couldn't they have brought me to the spy trail? later don yeager says to me, and we both have a sports background. he says, or let's do a book. i go, well, if we approach it like an investigative project and we bring something new to it, i'll do it. we did it, it worked, and thank goodness for that.

after 9/11 when you heard about the islamic threat and the islamic extremists, we try to make heads or tails of it, i'd see great columnists look back and try to retrieve this information. and i thought, wait a second. what are you talking about? islamic extremists, they were pirates. oh, yeah, they had pirate activity, but they were motivated and pushed and used as an excuse the quran and islam to attack us. and we had no axe to grind. after all, my book picks up, our book picks up in 1784 and 1785 where an economy who just got rid of the british rule, but we also lost british protection. we're buried in war debt, we did what americans always did, we tried to work our way out of it. we're going to get our economy roaring because we've got ingenuity, hard work and tremendous natural resources. we're going to have to use the mediterranean, and we're going to have to use the southern half of the mediterranean to get to the southern half of europe. of so as we go through those

waterways, we have a little bit of a problem. there are these pirates who see us as a soft touch, as an easy mark, and they began to take our ships from the dolphin to the maria, to the betsy, they take our guys and not only imprison them, they make them slaves. they not only take our ships, they take the cargo. they plunder them. and when we stop and try to make heads or tails of it, the explanation is you're infidels, we have the right to do that unless, of course, you want to pay us a certain amount of money. really? is that in the quran? yeah, it's in the quran. so we don't know much about it, so we decide to send our a-team out there. in london we have this guy named john adams, future president of the united states. in france we have this other gentleman named thomas jefferson. so we decide the best way to approach this is to begin talking to them and trying to figure out what their rationale is for taking our stuff, taking our guys hostage and imprisoning them. we're not spain, we're not france, your problem is with them. we're brand new. so they go into london, and they

set up a london with the ambassador to tripoli, now libya, and thomas jefferson decides he's going to join john adams on his request. so they have a great conversation. the guy seems amiable, seems approachable, seems like somebody we can deal with until, of course, it came down to decision time at which time he talked about the rationale for capturing our guys and taking our stuff and citing the quran. jefferson read the quran. he says, it's not in there for you to do this, we don't have a problem with you. they said there's only one way out, you've got to pay the money. we don't have any money. so we leave, we find out what spain, france and sweden were paying, and we are actually getting charged more than that. and we don't have the revenue. and both john adams and thomas jefferson leave with same sentiment, they're horrified and they're angered, but they have different marching orders from here on in. john adams, to paraphrase, said, hook, we can't fight these guys -- look, we can't fight

these guys unless we want to fight them forever. and america doesn't have stomach for a long war. man, is that still true. thomas jefferson says, listen, the message i'm getting from this meeting is the price is only going to go up, up, and sor or later the attacks are going to given again. i say we fight them. we don't have a government, a constitution, a president, but the recommendation back is essentially we're going to go with adams, and we're going to find a way to borrow the money and make the payments. so the trade begins again. but like marco rubio, our payments are a result bit late. only kidding. [laughter] we're taped. oh, i'm in trouble now. only kidding, senator. our payments are a little bit later, and they're not right. and we're not able to keep up and, man, jefferson was 100% correct. they're going to be implacable, and i'm talking about morocco, tripoli, algiers, algeria, tunis, tunisia. we've got four separate countries to cut deals with, all

with the same mentality, all who have their economy depending on feasting on people who are productive economies. so sooner or later adams -- george washington takes power. and he asks the secretary of state thomas jefferson to write a report, and he does. essentially, if you read these reports -- and we did -- they say we've got to stand up for ourselves. it's the wrong message to say that to the rest of the world, and they use phrases like aren't we americans? since when are we victims? so washington looks around and says my only thing missing is a navy. so -- [laughter] i think i have an idea. let's, essentially, my words, split the baby. i'm going to make the payments which, get this, are 20% of our economy at the time. but i'm also going to commission the building of a navy, and we'll see where it dose. because america early on was against a standing army, against a standing navy because they were afraid that the army, the navy and the military would become too strong and overwhelm

the people. this is a general saying, so they understand what he's doing. so we commission, we sped up the contracts, we build six ships. by the time washington's done, by the time adams takes power, we're ready, and we decide to stick up for what we believe in against the french in what they call a quasi-war. but when adams is confronted with the opportunity to stand p to the barbary powers, those islamic extremists, he goes, no. now, as you know, everybody in this room especially, within four years he loses power to jefferson, his vice president who takes over. they don't speak anymore. actually, adams tries to dismantle the 30 ships in his navy. and when jefferson takes over, he knows exactly what he's doing. he didn't campaign on it, but he knew. if i stop the payments, they're going to declare war. he stops the payments, and sure enough, the first foreign power to declare war on america, ironically, is tripoli now known as lib libya. down our flag pole which is an interesting way to call you out

today. and they did it, they struggled with it. they couldn't get the flag pole down, it was supposed to be this dramatic ceremony, finally the night fell, and they pulled it down. we don't even know it, but jefferson knows this, i'm going to send those ships out to start providing security in that area. but talk about a modern issue, his one issue is we don't have congressional approval yet. how does he know? he basically helped form the country, so i'm pretty sure i didn't give myself approval for the president to have a single power. [laughter] it helps when you write the rules. [laughter] so he says, i have an idea. they'll see the size of our ships, how sturdy they're built, we're going to show some power, not necessarily use the power. we're going to smother the tripoli economy. then we find out later they declared war on this. it was before instagram but not before snapchat. and i -- we just thought we were

going to blockade anyway. so we're trying to set up blockade, but we're terrible at it. the communications between our ships is bad, then it's freezing, the weather's bad, and guess what? these pirates, they're coy, they're cunning, and they know the area, they know the water. they're getting in and out. so jefferson's blocking decade and show of power to finally get them to the table to understand we're not going the pay anymore falls apart. and guess what also happens? pressure from washington to declare a war or not and to go ahead and rationalize what we're doing over there. because we're still terrorized because we, just like -- and this was celebrated in iran, but just as we were upset with the 444 days it took us to get our 52 hostages back from iran, the same empathy we felt there everybody day that the -- every day that the betsy, the dolphin and maria crew were being held against their will and enslaved, we suffered. so the blockade doesn't work, we finally get congressional i

approval. you know what the problem with the blockade was? rules of engagement. oh, the rules of engagement were bad. we could not engage the enemy unless they engaged us, unless we felt threatened. man, does that sound familiar. talk to a few navy seals who are walking around these streets and they're tell you the same story. so the rules of engagement gradually change. why? because they were not working. why? because it was costing us a lot of money. got to get the right guy in there. they had captain morris in there for a while. he was traveling with his wife. he thought he'd go through spain and be wined and dined. our ships sat there, and while the tripoli pirates made fun of us because every day just like isis and al-qaeda that you don't wipe them out is a victory. when saddam hussein stayed in power even though you would think he was humiliated, it's a victory. every day that the jv team isis stays in power even though they're diminished and pressured, it's a victory against america. it's the same mentality back then. little by little, we do what

america always does, we get it right. we start pushing. we finally get the right guy in charge, his name is edward preble, and they start pounding. and they start grabbing those ships, pressuring them. instead of taking them hostage, we would take out their mast, take their sail and push them out to sea. you find a way to get back. we'd go inside and talk to the shah of trip will -- tripoli and say, you ready now? no. why? because they don't care about their people. they would care that they're being shelled on a daily basis and their life is a mess and they can't even go shopping because they don't know if they're going to get hit by an american cannon. then jefferson makes the ultimate decision, i think. that idea was kind of farfetched three years before this conflict started suddenly seems to make sense. one of the renaissance men of his generation, if i can encourage anyone in this room to

do one thing, it's google william eden. i'm not trying to sell you on jefferson, my goal is the same one i had with the washington story. jefferson gets you to buy the book and gets you interested in the story, but you read thinking about william eden, edward preble as well as steven decatur. and then you realize how many great americans lived and died. in their generation, they were lauded, and outside the war college that you go and visit once in a while and take a seminar in, they are forgotten. my goal is for somebody to say, son, daughter, you've got to read -- which is, by the way, how i refer to my children -- [laughter] you've got to read about these guys. so william eden had this idea, he was a counselor, thousand we call him an -- now we call him an ambassador. he's a pretty extraordinary guy. he's 15 years old, he said, you know what, dad? i'm going to join the army. his dad says, no, you're not. i'm joining anyway. he becomes an officer. then would later train under mad

anthony but in between that would get himself to dartmouth and go to school. seemed to be somewhat of a genius as well as an incredible war fighter and very smart in battle. he would learn indian and arabic dialects and be very impressed, even the crazy -- in a good way, mad anthony, the general. so he learned military tactics. he really impressed senator pickering. senator pickering says i need somebody to go over who's a tough person and be our ambassador to due tunisia. i'll do it, never been out of america, i'll try it. so he observes the culture, and as much as he likes the culture, he can't believe they would subject themselves to these terrible rulers. these people don't have freedom. and he would encourage jefferson and everybody else, fight these guys. they're nothing. we have got to take them on. we act like they're 10 feet tall. we should fight 'em. so all of a sudden james -- [inaudible] goes up to him and says, william, got an idea.

there's a deposed ruler of tripoli, it's the brother. this crazy little brother killed the older one, forced out the middle one, and he kept his family hostage to make sure he's away. he wants to come back. why don't you ask jefferson if you can go get him out of egypt and come back and put him in power. the only thing we want is to be friends with us and establish relations. we don't want to dominate, we don't want to be imperialistic, we just want to have peace with this country. so in the beginning jefferson said, you're crazy. after three years of almost a standoff, we're winning, but it doesn't matter because the guy's still in powerful. jefferson goes, you know that idea we had? i think we're going to do it. it's going to be our first covert activity. so he says go over there, get yourself a thousand muskets, $20,000, we'll give you a few marines, make it happen. at the very least, he didn't think it would work, but he thought he'd pressure them from the ground. we were going to start our first land war against a muslim power

who are islamic extremists. so against impossible odds, the argus drops him off in egypt. they go and hunt this guy down. again, they only had snapchat. [laughter] so he had to go in through the city, find him in alexandria, introduce himself, convince him to go along, martial his men, hire sommers theirs. only had a handful of marines with him. they start in alexandria, virginia, in the perfect world, grab some horses, some plies, pay off and buy some military, sommers theirs, and they were going to manufacture. -- some mercenaries. the problem, no maps, no real direction, no roads, but they did have gps. only kidding. they start in egypt without any maps. hamid says, i'm going to give it a shot. he doesn't really have the valor and the strength and the spine of his brother, and you have william eden almost training him

to be a leader through this journey. you have all the uprisings along this 500-mile trek. it took about five and a half weeks and got just outside this place called benghazi and very close to a place called tripoli. so he marches over 500 miles, probably longer because it wasn't direct because they were literally trying to find their way through talking to bedouins and doing whatever directions they can have using the stars. and they find themselves outside durna, and they were outnumbered two to one. what does william eaton do? when outnumber, you charge. they take this city with a standing army in two and a half hours. among the people astounded when this was reported is a guy named thomas jefferson. oh, my goodness. did he just take a major city? we just wanted him to scare 'em. [laughter] they take the city in two and a half hours. the people come up and say, you're in charge. and eaton goes, i'm not in

charge, this is your city. we're not looking to oppress. it reminds me very much after shock and awe with, in iraq. if you talked to any of the army or the marines who were first into baghdad, the first thing they said was, what do i do? the first thing we said, whatever you want. they didn't understand they had a degree of freedom. so in charge we put up the american flag, and we started taking control. eaton starts making sure everybody gets fed. they start handling all the daily duties because the governor fled. and all of a sudden they did the inevitable, they prepared for a counterattack, and they blew them away again. by the time it was done, hamid had learned to fight. they said, i love this. the people were happy. but when this started happening, the word got back to the shah. he's in charge. says, you know, they took durna, they're coming for benghazi, and we're coming for you. how do we know the reaction? because the prisoners saw them. the american prisons, 303, many of which ended up from the philadelphia that was taken,

they saw how nervous he was. he would have cut any deal possible. enter tobias lear. he was in charge of the negotiation. he's a relatively shady character who was the best, was the chief assistant to george washington. and for some reason thomas jefferson always had him in the eye of the storm too. and there's a belief, not to get sidetracked too much, that george washington and thomas jefferson had a spat in writing. and jefferson knew that washington was also a historic figure and didn't want historians to know how bad this got and how angry washington got at him. so who would be in control of washington's letters at his death? who was the last one to see him? tobias lear. and if those letters were to disappear, who would be responsible? and then who would owe who a favor? be tobias lear, so he's going to go in and negotiate the first american victory in war. and without telling eaton, who had plans to take tripoli and take out the leaders who we observed, without any notice, he

cuts a deal. actually even cuts a payment. we didn't even free hamid's family. we cut a premature deal. next thing you know, our guys are out, everybody's celebrating, word gets to eaton, you've got to day to hop on the ship, we're done. we've got to go. he's hailed as a hero. he's given huge sections of maine as a reward, but he becomes an alcoholic because he could not rationalize the fact that his ultimately destiny, he trained his death for would not be fulfilled, and that's providing liberation and america the ultimate victory and respect. so he would die in the year 1809. in 1815 his bio would be released because he had all these letters, and he had some people who knew he lived an historic life even though it was an ugly end. i bought his biography, which there was only a handful made, on amazon for $112 from 1815.

i'd been trying to get it, and i got it. that should be worth -- and i'm not just looking to send my son to college, but he'd like to go -- [laughter] but that should be worth when you look at his biography, his background, that should be worth a million bucks. you should be knowing him as well as you know macarthur and patton, because those are the types of people that made up america. now, when you look at impact, you look at steven decatur. what happens is one major setback under edward preble was the grounding of the uss philadelphia. in an effort to hunt down one of those small little ships, the uss philadelphia went into very shallow water. they didn't have depth finders back then, and it was amazing they caught any fish because people are basically cheating now if you look at fishermen. but i digress. i live nearwater. but they run aground. the ship is stuck, they end up taking 303 prisoners, and they're going to make that the federalship to have new --

flagship of the new navy. the problem with steven decatur was onboard. he's commissioned with about 70 guys to go and blow that ship up. it was so impressive, his navy seal-like mission, i thought i'd read you this. essentially, lord nelson said, lord nelson says: the american commander with the small force in a very short time has done more for the cause of -- this is, actually, pope pius, but admiral horatio nelson called it the most bold and daring act of this age. that's how imsteven b decatur is. keep in mind, our country's 15 years old. no one thought we'd be successful, let alone become a naval power quickly, let alone have the integrity and values to stand up for what we wanted to do. after all, everybody else was writing checks. oh, man, those guys are crazy.

here, leave us alone. those guys are crazy. america? really? you going to stand up to us? yeah. you know what else we learned? how to build a ship. i was on the uss constitution the other day because "fox & friends" allowed me to do a nice little feature about book, it was made -- our boats are made out of a special oak, and with that oak was layered in a special sandwich that allowed the u, s constitution to -- uss constitution to get the nickname old ironsides. that's how thick these trees were located only in america, built correctly. we went to schoolen the british, on the french. we saw what didn't work, what worked, and we made it better. and 1812, which is a whole other conversation, then we could talk about how we were in naval. naval warfare. when it was all said and done, we went to war in 1812 and then, guess what happened? while we're fighting the british, the british with their instigation started attacking our guys again, started

capturing our guys again. after a terrible start, he said, decatur, do me a favor, william bane bridge, if you don't mind, let's send a navy while we're still dressed over to the bar by powers, and -- barbary powers, and let's send a message. we showed up with our navy, got our guys back, and not only that, we made them pay for our inconvenience. they were silent really until the 1970s, 1980s, after that, and america sent a message. ..

which hasn't been formed yet but i see this country that's 10 years old fight against impossible odds when everyone said it's taking on these worthless terrorist pirates and i see the way the rest of the world is responding and i see the way the rest of the world response was now. after all people are always making out in sneaking in and there's a reason. we were born, we were born in the best place and at the best time in the best country and it turns out the most formidable military and history of the world with the strongest economy it corrects its mistakes and it

does that and we make mistakes awake we can say they were -- when did do do the right thing but sometimes the execution was a little off so how many nations can say that? abs lynn anne and in my humble opinion we have seen what happens when america pulls back. chaos and the bad guys keep falling and we realize it. another thing i like to say in looking at research of which is fantastic and so much fun you find out in 1800 we were losing the spirit of 1776. where we you hear about that electorate election cycle how good it is to be an american. as long as we are worried about it we are never going to lose it and my hope is in the reason this is jump to quick sales and it's done exceedingly well and maybe it's going to be a successful as george washington secrets safe i think it's because america wants to learn about america and they're not allowing people to focus on social studies. for those who say i'm better at

math and science and social studies. do you like stories wexler by toby the stories are true. what kids don't like stories? in washington your privilege. you have the capitol building here and you go down the coast and you have jamestown. their privilege. all you have to do is go on a field trip around the block. if you could tell the stories and these kids get interested you let them reenacted then i think they're going to care. the thing that makes me feel the best is what i get from a parent who says they gave it to my son or daughter and is the first book i didn't push them to read and they read it on their own. we want to get these teenagers who are writing me letters and i feel like we did our job. if we only sold to what we tell the story of every day americans is not just about washington and jefferson, think i did my job.

i couldn't wait to spread the word about this and i'm so glad c-span is here with cameras because of "fox news" we have a wide audience. book signings around the country with an opportunity to interact with you and continue to tell the story but that is a story about the pirates. what i would also like to do is give an opportunity as a welcome genevieve back up your task of the questions, three or four questions. we have personal questions i might back off. if you have questions about the story, i also know this i don't know everything. don and i love doing it. i love the fact that everyone was open. we have a guy who kept a play going for the barbary pirates in the 90s. instead of saying brian i know

you're barbary pirates expert, how can i help you? this was in a teacher's manual. do you want to go to the jefferson library? this is where you go. if people weren't open and honest in the same in washington where people are in these museums making $10,000 a year to do reenactments, they weren't so open and honest i would not have been able to pull off this book and probably will not whatever success it has wouldn't have happened if people didn't see i'm on your team. if you tell the story them on your team. as soon as we set up the atlantic found that we had a lot of people on our team. i'd like to be able to answer every question. i know how smart you are and they know some of you just sit there and study this and i don't want to come off as an expert. as the game is a very enthusiastic american who wants to tell a story that america

wants to know. genevieve do you want to come up? >> up? >> first of all thank you very much. a positive light in early copy of this book and i was on a training reading it. i've been reading it and i don't want to tell other people -- it's really good. >> here's the other thing, there are no pictures in it. when you get somebody who likes a book without pictures. >> to the people i want to give this book to our two of my oldest nephews. they are going to love it so we want to give you all the chance to ask questions of brian. we have microphones and if you raise your hand we will bring the microphone to you. >> thank you very much for your presentation. talk a little bit about jefferson.

broadway says he's a weak individual. is that how you saw him? >> now, it's like me telling michael jordan how to play basketball. if you don't want to hear from me, what this guy gave in his lifetime i don't think we will ever see again so i judge him on his personal life but did he have issues? absolutely. did he do some things politically to keep himself above board, to keep himself relevant? absolutely bloody such an extraordinary american in such a deep thinker and he's a curious and somebody who brought so much. one of the great things in the book is in monticello and when you go then you realize you are just scratching the surface of what he achieved in his life, i'm not going to judge him. i'm just glad he's on our team.

he was the unlikely guide to stand up the barbary pilots, brutal and worthless because madison for example in lynne cheney spoke she included madison saw the reason jefferson took inviting the british and he was varying he'd be viewed that way few ran from the fight. so you knew who was in the forefront of the news. i laugh at people that want to judge thomas jefferson. he's not perfect but i have yet to meet the perfect person. he had a big upside and he made some big mistakes but man man are read like you don't have them on our team and the other thing is i understand that plague which is about time we had a rap musical about the founding fathers. it's way overdue. i have course wrote the score but they beat me to the punch. i know people who saw the jfk

movie and said wait a second there's a whole generation of people that grew up in the conspiracy thing like it happened like it was fact. i'm not going to say he's perfect. i met a guy who said he's related to thomas jefferson because he has a -- in his background. that's his last name. i guess we found that a few years ago it was true. whatever happened happened. i just think it's our responsibility to learn about him and not judge him. thank goodness we have these extraordinary people in 3140s looking to stand up for this country. >> thank you for your talk today. talk to us about why he's so famous and the decatur house. >> the decatur house in decatur georgia and we understand it is there's a real belief that he

was going to be president. that's how heroic he was. the barbary wars in the war of 1812 when the winds kept coming many on the uss constitution in this fearlessness was legendary. i have a picture in this book. what happened is they go on a mission and decatur is leaving everyone on a mission. they are sitting around talking like a bunch of guys who are on a mission and it turns his brother james is not coming back it was one of these pirate ships with a boarded ballot move with a sword and he mortally wounded him so james is fighting for his life. steven looks at him and says let's revenge him. that night he gets a small group to get a new board the ship and try to find the guy that almost killed his brother james and they find him and decatur is in

a heap of trouble. they are goading at each other with hand-to-hand combat with swords and you see this painting today. this guy thomas fraser jumps in front of the sword and takes it and doesn't kill him but it would have killed them. why? he said my unit can live without me but he can't live without the gator. imagine having this leadership where you throw yourself whether it's in front of a bullet or in front of a life or in front of a stored sword? i can imagine that type of inspiration but he showed it. everyone around him was pretty much in awe of him. everyone in this room knows probably who he is. i don't know much about him but i know he was in some children's books. i thought he was diction until you read everything he did. >> thank you for your contribution to the history

especially the early part of american history. first of all what did you think of the french and english in the napoleonic war? the other is what were your thoughts about hamilton in the preceding time and during this? >> there was a constant rivalry between the two. this verbal lead bath that ended up being actual blood. to see these guys lock horns the way they did over politics and beliefs of big government small government they say well we are not destroying the country. we are not doing something americans never did. i'm not sure who is right. everything that he tried to do a jefferson tried to undo and vice versa so i give you all that but i also, what i also found staggering to find out is you

are for big government and small government but most of all they were americans and after you are done you were done. you get to the point where you want to destroy the country except for aaron burr with a clash with william eton where he said william i know you have been reduced by thomas jefferson eaton go snowe and not only that but i'm telling a new study tells on them and he ends up in a war trial. was pretty serious stuff back then so you're the question was? this is what i would say about that. i knew as a sports person if you get upset in the finals like the mets beat the orioles i think secretly the orioles wanted to play the mets again. you want to get that guy back then i find out almost every one of our founding fathers knew they were coming back for a rematch. our goal was to keep the rematch far enough away. we kept the native american

population under control solidified the country and had a standing navy and army to fight them off so the quasi-war was a war against the friends of the fight against under john adams and then you had the british who were fighting the french. as scary as they understand for madison was when he found out the british and french maid peace because that meant the british were coming after us and he was 100% right. the way they looked at it, i think they looked at us as a threat because who was america a representative government. really? we don't have that in britain. we didn't have that in france. we rotated our leaders through elections. they don't have elections and we don't rotate her leadership. we do this thing called die in office were being killed in office. that was their philosophy so if america worked they were threatened. the people were furious that they were threatened so i don't believe they were ever on our side and it took us fighting the british straight up in washington burning and if it

wasn't for miraculous weather activity all of washington would rent. we would have lost all of our founding documents. i believe they were the very best. that's how i feel. >> i'm from kansas city. i appreciate your reference to the royals. >> i don't appreciate my own reference to the royals. [laughter] >> the score stands for itself to my question really is somewhat of a personal question. what was your inspiration? did you have a teacher somewhere that inspired you to get interested in history or what was it that inspired you? >> i was from -- high school the people that gave you jerry seinfeld and all the bald ones, sorry about alec. joey buttafuoco, i can't apologize enough. [laughter] brian centro orchestra and the stray cats.

so i just had this great teacher. i had these incredible teachers who told stories and their member world war i. my teacher's name is mr. him know bill. you guys on the side and you guys on the side. everyone grab some papers out of your hands. separate the desks into rows and i needed to climb up and down those desk and when you get to each other hit as many people with as many papers as you can. he is the craziest guy. at that time he was drinking. [laughter] what he was teaching us is trench warfare world war i because that's what you did do. who had the courage to be had at that trench and try to get into their trench. we had all these symbols and also sit in front of this pointer to cfr regard. as soon as you got all the presence down you got 100 points

a little thing like that. all i wanted was the 100. i didn't necessarily want the american historian but i couldn't wait for the next chapter. i can't wait for this so i got lucky. i don't know if you guys are like batumi and now there's up rain that has creativity and while i'm created i'm not good at math. i'm not good at math or science but even if you like math or science do you like stories and do you have pride in this country? if you don't you aren't paying attention to the stories because nobody has the story so we have. when you were born in america was taught to me early but all you have to do is show me the stories and he hit the lotto. i'd rather be poor in america ben ritz summer -- rich somewhere else. we want the opportunity to be successful. we don't want it handed to us. we want the opportunity to be

successful. bring up donald trump, he was rich and he became a billionaire. that's the hunger you need. you took risks. i don't know why he doesn't bring that up. i'm a millionaire and i have to read -- work the rest of my life. i wanted to be bigger and better and more important. i think ambition is great and i think the opportunity to fuel that fire is great. that's what i got from my social studies teacher. >> doing your research did you uncover how blessed we are and how the hand of the lord played a big part in bringing together such a wonderful original founding fathers? >> it's unbelievable. i can't even put into words. that's when people say and i was talking to larry sabato on the radio thursday and he says i

know bringing up jefferson today's controversial. i go really? is controversial and denise proceeded to talk about jefferson's greatness. i think it's incredibly misplaced to say well such and such was doing this during his this time so therefore they are not great today. alexander hamilton, excuse me you can't have, i'm trying to think of you have jefferson and who had slaves than jefferson who had slaves. i can imagine black-and-white water fountains in the 60s. i'm not going to say everyone in their 60s or 50's is a horrible person. to me it's unthinkable to think that blacks would have to go to the back of the bus. how could that be possibly tolerable but i'm also going to say in 201550 years old, 51, stop pressing me. i'm not going to put myself back in the 60s and 50's.

i know we go through an evolutionary process eyes trying to get better so to me there are two things. for that storm to come ripping through washington and forcing the british out and burn washington to the ground was unbelievable. researching george washington secret six and i found out we were within a whisper of having her army wiped out. we had nowhere to go so washington had to do something. he had to retreat so he waited for night to fall. he called on the able vessels we had to get it out. the problem was it was too windy so it's too windy and we can't go until 11:00 at night. the fall of darkness we start getting our army and the sun is coming up in our -- half of the army still there. out of nowhere we find out a biography by washington side the entire war and then the fog rolled in so thick you couldn't

see 4 feet in front of your face. so he's saying this living it in 1778 and you can't see 4 feet in front of your face. it allowed us to get into the dash and to get out to fight another day. we would never been stupid enough to stand off face-to-face with the british yet we do guerrilla warfare would come from the outside only wear them out. if it wasn't for that fog, would have that fog come from? if you think is one of those myths pick up a book from a guy who told us that they didn't have any agenda except what it down on paper. we see it over and over again. doesn't make any sense, we can tell the story we realize some people say we are an exceptional nation and some other people say every day we are acceptable we will be over the coke scuse me i don't think so i have little problem. i know i'm biased because i'm american but we have an all star

team that have a chance to live elsewhere and choose with your people knocking the door and debating on different ways to get in and not to get out. no one is building a raft tonight to try to get to cuba. by the way a great shirt. kasha scollay. absolutely. >> i love your passion for history, the american history and i haven't read this yet. i know it's just fresh out. what's on the horizon? what are you working on next? i would probably work on apologizing to my wife being away for five straight weekend. [laughter] i have a few ideas afterwards. i want to see how this goes. i'm lucky enough to be on fox and i read a great but the most important thing is the author's listening right now -- i would

just like you to know about it but the other thing is i don't like to tell it. i don't want to say buy the book. you have to buy the book and when i'm on fox that want to say i'm in fredericksburg on sunday and i'm going to be in santa barbara to the reading ranch and i want people to know. i don't want to sell. my whole thing is -- if i feel as though i'm going over that line i will not do my next project. i want to see how it goes and hopefully i do it in a way that is acceptable to everyone and everybody is pumped up about it at fox. in case you know it or not fox is the most patriotic company in the world. we understand what i said earlier that we hit lotto.

not too far off from this one. >> when i read bill o'reilly's version i get stuck on words. my publisher seems to thing this isn't written for harvard professor to be impressed. this is written for the everyday american to be impressed. i don't know much about publishing to do it but if i was 6 feet 7 inches with a deep voice and huge ratings on my own show he probably -- whose with me, get in line. i have a little bit different of a deal but i do say this. i give all the credit to bill o'reilly because i thought brian is going to go to work and do news and sports and go home and

i'm going to read history one have an opportunity. i never thought the two would meet but to -- until bill o'reilly did killing lincoln, killing kennedy, who else did he kill? killing jesus. reagan. if we have to write everything is a compressco at to get out of here. until i saw the mix and the way i saw everyday americans being lit up and excited about the stuff we thought we knew about lincoln and the chase in the murder and how many people in ford theater until i saw that it gave me an opening. the other thing i saw was glenn beck on her channel would open up a show and showed black-and-white the depression. i thought to myself this is -- in the ratings boomed and we had such passion for it. there might be a market for this and i don't have to necessarily

do something different. i thought the news people might have a sense of perspective when they took in these historical stories. that's my long answer to this short question. don't really think you can get this in seventh and eighth grade. if worst came to worst you could read with me. >> want to thank you very much. i'm a retired colonel and air force and want to tell you that bringing american history like this to light especially with the things going on in the world today is extraordinary and you are a patriot and thank you patriot and thank you very much. >> thank you very much for saying that. thank you very much for coming credit will sign off all of your books and i can do a taxi right here. if you guys want to get in line. sin i know several people wrote books prior to coming in but we have more for sale right here.

if you want to head out and come right back. thank you. you can come up here and say it. thank you all very much. [inaudible conversations]

and they do it by trying to chop