we're seeming over $50 billion a year on corrections, and when it comes to the racial disparities of our system there are more african-americans under correctional supervision today than there were slaves at thing high of slavery in 1850. >> host: how did we get there? >> guest: it's all really going back to the war on drugs in many respects, which began in the late '70s and created a whole series of disparities in sentencing sentencing and also goes back to sentencing tough on crime, sentencing laws that made it easier for people to good to jail, easier for them stay there, and easier for them to stay there for very extended periods of time. >> host: you're a native new yorker, and there was a period in the '70s where new york was rife with crime. people were scared. was there a different solution? >> guest: well, for one, fear is a terrible -- fear is not the thing to be ruled by when we make decisions as far as government and as far as these

kinds of things go, because fear makes you act rashly and what happened was that the fear was played upon, and prison was presented, and mass incarceration was presented as the opt way to deal with crime, and we know that there is no correlation between the drop in crime rates and the rise in mass incarceration. study after study has shown this. we know there are other routes. it did not have to be this route towards mass incarceration. >> host: we're in california, the home of the strikes and your out. that has been effective in any way? >> guest: hardly. california's tree strikes and your another, we have the rock fell are drug laws in new york, a whole host of other tough sentencing laws that have landed, again, millions of people in jails and prisons and under correctional supervision, draining our resources and draining us of the value of these human beings, who could be contributing to society in all kinds of ways.

>> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> a history news networkl founder, the author of this recent book "political animals: how our own ainge bridge gets in the way of smart politics." do shark attacks effect elections? >> guest: well, that's the story i begin the book with.h. 100 years ago in 1916, the worst series of shark attacks in american history struck southern new jersey. the movie "jaws" that everybody. has seen, it was based on the story of what happened back then in the two-week period, fourur people were killed in shark attacks. what has that got to do with politics? i wrote a book on politics. well, four months later woodroww will son was up for re-election, and he won the state of new jersey, but in those small beach towns which had been devastated

by the shark attacks, you can imagine what happened. people heard sharks and the hotels emptied and everybodypm went home and it was a devastating economic development fork that area. as soon as they held the vote, what happened? the people in those towns voted against woodrow wilson in overwhelming numbers, in the same proportion that those people volted against herbert hoover at the height of the great depression? why? woodrow will son could not have done anything to help thoseth people solve their shark problems. that was beyond the power of the president of the united states, but people are irrational when. they vote, and particularly mitt cal scientist have found when bad things happen to them they take out their angst on theot. incumbent party is whether that incumbent is responsible or not. the book is about how our brain works, 40 years ago when i was in college we didn't know how

the brian works. today we do mostly as a result of neuroscience but also the insights of evolutionary psychologists, political psychologist, anthropologists and all this science over the last 15, 20 years has changed our understanding how our brain operates iwhat do you mean by o'stone aged thinking ." >> the stone age lasted for two and a half million years, and it was during this period the human brain wag evolving it evolved to help hunter-garters address the problem the faced at hunter-gatherers. didn't evolve to help news the 21st century address the problems we're facing. and our problems are far different. when you're living in a small community of no more than 100 to 150 people you know everybody. you work with everybody. you know your leaders because you're living withthem, and in many cases they're kin folk. today, the modern world, there's

millions, billions of people,ing and we don't get to meet our leaders. all we do is get to see them on tv and we often read them wrongp we don't understand when they're lying to us and manipulating usu and the book is all about how you have to protect yourself against your own brain, because you're brain will trick you to thinking you're in a small cooperate and you know these people, and actually you don't. >> host: rick in the production to your book, you write that: i'm going to tell you the stories of people who have been paid in ways that zoom absurd. your focus on behavior associated with being disengaged from politics and apathetic and not correctly sizing up our leads, punishing politicians who tell us hard truths, and failing to show empathy in circumstancec that clearly cry out for it. that said, is there a general impression that you can give of

what voters are like in america today? >> guest: i don't know what to do with that question. give me something a little more. >> host: are voters curious? >> guest: good. voters are curious about what is happening in their immediate circumstances. that's what the human brain is designed to do, to be curious about what is happening about things you can see. half of the human brain isis devoted to visual tasks. we are very responsive to what we can see, and particularly because of our nervous system, to what we can feel. so when you're in a group of people you can size them up, you can read their body language, you can get a good sense of kind of who they are, at least a certain ability to have an assess. of who they are and what they're like. you can't do it in the modern world. in the political world we're living in because most of the time you see your politicians only on tv. your nervous system isn't coming into play. that means you're not really focused, and if you can't see

somebody's eyes and how they're really looking at you, it's very hard to read them. and in any case, our brain is, again, playing a trick on us. back in the stone age, when were reading people's emotions -- let's say you were going out on a hunt and wanted to look toward the leader of the hunt, you could tell whether in a particular moment is he feeling courageous or frozen by fear? you had a deeper understanding of the person because you lived with them. you worked with them all the time. in the modern world, we don't have that kind of personal intimate experience with our b leaders, and yet our brian still makes us think we do know them. so, here's the question. are we curious? hunter-gatherers, never been an example of hunter-gatherers who aren't curious about who is leading them. they're curious because what do human beings do all day long? they gossip.

that's what human beings do. we gossip about people. what does gossipping do? gossip helps us understand who is up, who is down, whether somebody made a mistake, speculating about their motives. that means we're automatically engaged as human beings in our local politics. m but in the multicultural world we're living in, with millions of people, we don't have that kind of natural nerve obvious system reaction to people who live far airplane from thus. is it the problem hoff washington, dc. you're in washington, dc. mores of the american people live hundreds if not thousands of miles away. live in seattle, washington. seattle is far away fromom washington, dc. so when things are happening there, it's very hard for me, living in seattle, to try to get really sited about what is going on in d.c. if i see two candidates duking it out in a political debate, okay, i can get excited about that momentarily, but that

feeling quickly evaporates. me, i happen to be a political junkie so i'm paying attention, but most americans are living their lives, not payingdi attention to politics so they seem to display if difference, a lack of curiosity about politics. that's because of the way the human brain works. it's an indictment of human beings, our brain wasn't devisep for television politics. it was devised for small, intimate groups. we're really good at that kind of politics. not so good at politics where w talk about things happening a long, way away from us. i hope that answers you question.to >> host: should we trust our instincts when it comes to politics? >> guest: no that's the main point of the book. basically in our daily lives, we trust our instincts because they're constantly provingng they're pretty good. if you're walking on the sidewalk, and you hear tires screeching, your instinct is to look up quickly, look around,

and pull back and make sure you're not about to get run over by a bus or truck going by. that's the same if you were a hunter-gathererrers 10:0:00, 100,000 years ago and you heard a tying fer the wood -- tiger in the woods, you would have a fight or flight response in our personal lives our instincts work inch politics, i argue, you can almost never unquestioningli go with your instinct becaused your instincts are generally not suited for the kinds of problemy we face in the modern world. >> host: you look at the work of psychologists drew weston, and you write about some of his work. here is westn's explanation. what goes on in our brain when we turn a blind eye toward information we fiend objectionable. quote. c when confronted with potentially troubling political information, a network of neurons becomes active that produces distress,

the brain registers the conflict between data and desire, and begins to search for ways to turn off the spigot of unpleasant emotion, notice what we don't do. we don't expend cognitive energy to digest the information. instead we immediately try to reconcile it with our partisan prefer reins. can you give us an -- preferences can you give us an example. >> guest: back in 2004, johnhn kerry versus george w. bush. he put kerry voters inside an mri machine and then he told them some information about john kerry that wasn't flattering, something that made him look like he was a hypocrite. and what happened inside their brain? well, they very briefly registered a reaction, of course it was disfavor with what they were hearing, and then immediately their brains shutnt

off the flow of information and those neurons went quiet. they went inactive. the same thing happened when he put bush votes in the mri machine. when they heard unpleasantt information they had an initial reaction and then they went quiet. their neurons went quiet.ia what is that? that is what other social scientists refer to as our psychological immune system at work. we don't like dissidence. we don't like to find out that a belief we hold about somebodyy that we like, and then it turns out that, well, here's some contrary information to what we believe about that person, that creates dissidence. we don't like dissidence. the human brain doesn't like that feeling. makes us feel anxious and bad. so quickly tries to figure out a way to get rid of the information and does it by basically closing the door on the information so those neurons go quiet. and then our psychological immune system improves, we

restore our feeling of well-being. so, when you're, for instance, talking about trump voters, so donald trump has been called out by politico and o'political fact changing organizations for telling one lie after another after another. like for instance when he debuted his campaign and started talking about how thousands of muslims were dancing on theft rooftops of apartment buildings in new jersey as the watched the twin towers fall down and they were cheering. that just wasn't true. what did trump voters make of that? their brains, just like for other voter -- it's not just about trump voters. it's true of all of us. we don't want to hear that bad information about a candidate who we're inclined to support so they basically ignored it and they're not bothered by i it. their brain shuts off the information. this is how the human brain works theft what drew weston's

research so ably shows us. >> host: rink shenkman is our guest. the numberers on the screen. 202 is the area code, republicans, 748-8001. democrats 748-8000, and independents, 748, 8002. you can dial in. we'll begin taking your calls in just a minute. you can also participate via social media,@chance wj is our twitter handle. heat bin with robert in worcester, massachusetts, on our democrats line. go ahead.is >> caller: i don't know what this guy is talking about, but the average person really does not know politicians know that the average person is almost ignorant. would you have a commercial on tv? you see a tide commercial, and the tide commercial says, it would take the ring off your

husband's neck, the next day, that same woman will go down and buy that tide because of that powerful commercial.pe and the main problem is that people are not voting with they're heart. they're voting with their heads and you got to put them both together you have to have head and a heart, and when you let the politicians and in trick, that is a sin. never should you let a politician walk in your chair and speak on the pulpit and that is all you black people fromet down south -- >> host: last, let get a response. what did you hear? >> guest: well, the caller is absolutely right that the american people don't know a lot of facts about the way our government functions. so, a majority of the american people don't know that we have 100 u.s. senators, even though that's a nice round snub easy to

remember.ch a majority tv the american people don't know we have the branches of the government. a majority of people believe on the eve of the iraq war that saddam hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks and that the reason we were going to invade iraq was to take revenge for him having destroyed the world trade center and attacked the pentagon. so, when you are what is called a low-information voter, which is unfortunately true of a majority of the american people, low-information voters are mose easily manipulated by politicians so they don't know enough so 0 politician can stand up and if he is are articulate and enthusiastic and can make a case and connect with you as one person to another person, look through a tv camera, as i'm doing right now, if i'm really exciting and you're impressed with my passion and enthusiasm and what i'm saying makes sense you don't have the independent

basis upon which to evaluate my arguments or my information.n. so you're just going with kind of your gut and a hunch, and that is what i'm, aing in my become is a mistake. >> host: jedwin tweets into you, mr. shenkman, i respectfully disagree with you. can't read politicians from watching them on tv. body language is all telling. >> guest: body language is important. how quickly do we make evaluations on politicians? we make up minds and basically anybody that we encounter in 167 milliseconds. that's faster than it takes to blink your eye, and if you give people more time to make an evaluation, they just double down on what their initial impression is, and the problema with that it your brain is

playing a trick on you. back in the stone age, when we were making these super fast evaluations, of course it was very, very important because if you encountered a stranger in the forest or jungle you had to quickly be able to size them up, and most of the time that meant this was a person who was hostile and a threat to your life, so you probably either should run or you have to kill the guy. but for the hunter gatherers when they were sizing people up it wasn't just on the basis of body language, or facial expression. it was on the basis of deep knowledge of in this person pause you were living with this person and working with them.ve so if you have an overreliance on body language and you think that you can tell whether somebody is lying to you or telling the truth, based on their body language, you are deceiving yourself. let the go one step even further.

when somebody, a politician, is telling you something, and they believe it to be true, then your psychological system, your detention system doesn't work. our system only works if theho person telling us a lie thinks they're lying.e politicians, though, are really good. they're like used car salesmen. they're really good at tellingng you something that at that moment they can convince themselves they actually believe. that is why you can't rely on your ability to read somebody and their body language, because if they're sincere -- and politicians are always sincere -- then your detection system doesn't work. >> host: let's hear from barbara, a democrat, in martha's vineyard, massachusetts. you're on. >> caller: hi, peter. thank you much. richard, this is the best, best, best news every. the first day of the new era

which i am christening in case you haven't come up with a phrase, paleopolitical. this is our brain on the drugs of politics that we don't understand how our brain works so, pete,-i have a homework assignment for your staff. assemble the experts that richard will lead you to on evolutionary biology and psychology and get them together with richard and three hours nobody in -- depth or however the hell you can do it or rich you assemble them in a become fair. this is the story, folks. now, i want -- another thing to. do i want you produce tower look bat an e-mail i just sent. it has no text it in. it's only visual. i want to prove richard's point. the subject line is just vote blue. so this is my message for how the democrats have to unify. a visual pun in it and i want to see if richard can figure it out.

this man is walking the walk and talking the talk, and richard, last night, keep on using the emphasis you're using in your speech, just like aam deliberately using it now. there's a penetrative quality to assertion. we are asserting thises the truth. we're not hypothesizing. this is the dawn of the new age -- >> host: bart. barbara, thank you. rick schenk men, any response for barbara. >> guest: she was very complimentary so i'm not going to disagree with her. let's talk about another aspect of how our brain works. basically from neuroscience we have learn in the last 20, 30 years, that we have two ways of digesting information. one is called system one and the other is called system two. with system one basically you're not thinking, you're just taking

in information, matching it with other information you have in your brain and if there's a close enough match, your brain doesn't think hard about it, you assume the new information isan just like the old information and you treat it the same way. system two is higher order cognitive thinking, and guess what we want to do in politics? almost always politicians don't want you to use system two. they don't want you to use higher order cognitive thinking. so they'll use red meat words that get your system one juices progress so you're not really thinking, you're just reacting. for a republican audience they'll say something like,mu scary muslim terrorists and that activists certain neurons in your brain and you're acting fearful or angry and you're not thinking, you're just reacting, and the democrat does the same thing. they tell some -- a substory prr

about somebody to get you to feel empathetic and then go along with their programs. you're not really thinking about it. you're just kind of reacting. and what i'm arguing in the book is that the only way to safeguard yourself against manipulation by politicians is to always second-guess your automatic reaction. you have to second-guess your automatic reaction. don't trust yourself in politics. that goes against all of the stuff that we learned in the 1960s, where it was trust yourself, trust yourself. in personal life, trust yourself. in politics, don't. it's a difficult message. i'm hoping that people take it to heart. >> host: brenda is in niantak connecticut on the democratic line. what's the name of your town? >> caller: identity niantic, connecticut. >> host: thank you. >> caller: no problem.ay

wanted to call and say that i did watch the debate, and i don't think that there should be anymore debates. i really hate to see things deter you'rate to the level of the g.o.p. side. i was very proud of her performance, i think senator sanders did well as well. i hate to see them hurt each other in the primary piece. and i do -- i disappointed in i nator sanders, and i do think that him running as a democrat is -- if he continues to criticize hillary to the extent,

that it could definitely hurt news the long run in the general election. >> host: all right, bren dark let's leave it there. and rick shenkman, given thatow there was a debate last night. i don't know if you watched that one. how would your book fit into some of these debates? >> guest: well, let me tell you what i recommend in the book, which is when you're sitting watching a political debate, basically you are in the sameoa role as somebody who goes and attends a broadway show and what you wind up doing is evaluating the performance of the candidates who are arguing with each other. i dent think that's terribly -- i don't think that's terribly helpful. what is helpful. even if you're not a plate $junkie. you do other things so you'reti not following politics all that closely. you can still game tremendous real insights into what is going

on in these candidates' campaigns by monitoring your own emotional reaction. so, pull out a pen and paper when you are about to sit down to juan one of these debates, and every time you feel a strong emotion of some kind, fear, anger, enthusiasm, patriotism, whatever you're feeling, jot it down next to the candidate's name.. at the end of the debate, instead of ewaiting their performances, look how you emotionally reacted to what they're saying and you will have a road map to these candidate's campaigns. you understand how they're trying to manipulate you by the emotional buttons they were trying to push during the debate. it's no accident when they take a certain line in the debate. they have a lot of advisers telling them, if you say this the voters will have this reaction. if you say this, voter wells have this reaction.

so just study yourself and you'll have a very keen understanding of what the politicians' campaigns are about. and that is much more helpful than just sitting welcome like you're at a broadway show and saying, gee, this person did well, this person didn't. i know we all play the game, anf i play that game as well, but it's not very helpful thiss approach i'm outlining is more helpful. >> host: anne, spring hill florida, republican line, please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: okay. have a comment concerning a statement that your guest made about donald trump lying about the muslims dancing in the street and 9/11. he is not lying. i seen this with my own eyes. >> host: mr. shenkman. >> guest: all right. you did see it with your own eyes and because in the middle east people were dancing, and there's videotapes that we all

saw after 9/11 of muslims in the middle east, and in other parts of the world, people who were happy to see the united states, a big, bad super power, as it's viewed in some parts of the world, getting knocked down a little bit. so people were dancing in the streets but it wasn't muslims in america. it wasn't american muslims who were doing this, but our brain confuses the visual information that it's taking in. at that time, you were seeing this, it registered powerfully on your brian. think one of the big shocks of 9/11, assad from the attacks themselves, the other big shock, the other big shock, was that people hate us to the point where they're actually happy to see us killed by the thousands. streetat left a powerful impression on your mind but you didn't see american muslims dancing in the street. that didn't happen. >> host: next call for rick

shenkman, author of "political animals" from suzanne in kent, washington, independent line go ahead, suzanne. j >> caller: what you just said about the politicians advisers telling them how to go ahead and say what they're supposed to say instead of really answering the question. that sort of remains me -- not really in the stone age. everybody is in the reality tv age. so, what the advisers are telling them to do is how to get the very best response out of the viewers, and instead of really thinking about what the politicians are saying on all these different programs, we're

being taken into the reality tv world where everybody kind of floats along and we all care about real -- we don't care about real stuff. we just care about what we think is happening. so, i don't think stone age is here. i think we have progressed a lot from stone age because we're at the stage where we can sit there with a completely empty mind and -- >> host: all right, suzanne, let's gate response from m-serveman. >> guest: well, we're not living in the stone age that's the problem. but we have a stone age brain on our shoulders and it is not really very good at helping us understands the problems we are facing. for instance, almost daily the -- one of the political problems we'll face involves the fate of millions of people,

whether we're talking about tax policy or whether we should go to war against terrorism or whatever the issue, it's always a policy involving millions of people. the human brain wasn't designed to address the problems of millions of people. it was designed to address the problems of a small number of people. that's why we have a difficulty when we hear that, for instance, we're going to drop bombs in syria on a bunch of towns. we have a very great difficulty imagining the human beings who may be at the other end of the bomb sites, who maybe are innocent, could be innocent civilians who are going to get killed. we see them as an extractions because the human brain is only capable of seeing people as hums when they're standing in front of us. then we get them as human beings. w and the thought of, wow, this

mother walking with a child is going to be blown up by a bomb, well, we find that horrifying as human beings. but if we're talking about bombing people who dress differently than us, who look differently than us, who live in a part of the world that we can even find on the map, then they're not human beings at all at that point. say l they're abstractions, and it's easier to say, like ted cruz, just carpet bomb. that's being careless with other people's lives. it's not being sensitive to the fact that some human beings there who are innocent might get killed. but our brian doesn't work that way. we don't think that way and that's the problem. >> host: wild and wonderful tweets into you, mr. shenkman so basically you're saying we're all just pavlov's dogs. ring the bell and we salivate.

>> guest: no, i'm not saying that at all.d we while there are studies i cite in the book where if somebody al says, -- we have stimulus x, you'll get a y response, but we are human beings, after all, we higher order cognitive thinking. so, here's the story that i tell when i go on the road and i give talks. as i did this past week a couple of occasions. i tell the story of jesse washington. 100 years ago, in 1916, the same year as the shark attacks we started out the program talking about in 1916, jesse washington was a black man accused of a crime in waco, texas. the authorities put him in jail. a mob then came, broke him out of jail, they hung him up on a tree, they castrated him, they cut off his fingers and set him

on fire and killed him. now, we have all heard about lynchings. this one took place before a crowd not of ten or 15 people, but 15,000 people, and there are pictures of this crowd, and they're not horrified by what- they're seeing. they're either cheering or they're pleased with what they're seeing. wow. 100 years later, we find this horrific. our instant revulsion indicates we find that's hard to conceive. what is going on here? this is because our culture has changed. we're not pavlovian dogs. we respond. we can think. but in politics most of the time, we're not thinking. we are simply reacting. but we have the capacity to think.

and this is the wonderful thing about human beings. we are not slaves to our instincts. we can actually think our way through our problems if we think to take the act of actually thinking. >> host: back to your book "political animalsty youite in main stream politics anger undermines democracy, people who are angry cannot see other's points of view. angry people don't compromise. >> guest: this is the big problem facing the united states right now. so, when a small group of people want to create change in america, often they're people who are very, very angry, and they want to see some change happen. so, this was true, for instance, of the civil rights marchers in the 1950s and the 1960s,

when bull connor in alabama let loose these dogs on crowds of civil rights protesters. you can be sure those civil rights protesters were really in a piping hot angry mood, and small groups need anger toesion achieve group cohesion and to get anything done, because the forces against them are so powerful they need anger to kind of keep them going, to get up every day and fight the good fight. but when a whole country, when a majority of the american people, turn angry, democracy stops. anger is like grit in gears of democracy, the gears can't grind proper live if people are ang -- properly if people are angry, and we know this from science. my book is about learning about what science is telling us about our brians. what happens when we are angry?

the insula in the activated. and we don't compromise and we become close-minded and not open to fresh viewpoints. when the amygdala is activated in the human brain that's correct the seat of emotionall power, we can get anxious, and while we don't like to feel anxious, anxious people have an open mind and are more likely to compromise. but angry people don't, and we're in a situation today where a majority of the people are angry. this is very bad for our democracy. we have to get the anger out of our politics. >> host: allen in temple hills, maryland, democrat. you have been very patient go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: thank you, for taking my call. i want to ask the gentleman, your guest, two questions. the first one is, you mentioned that during the kerry and the

mri scan, you told them false information, that certain part of the brain fired off signals and then shut down, like when they heard that. i think one question is, how -- what would you recommend for those individuals that hear that false information and they -- it's a shocker and then shuts done, you don't -- what recommendation do you have for them to get through that? and a second one is, the belief in our current elections, people are angry, and they don't want to believe they're angry, yet they are angry, and they want to say that this is how we -- this is our world, too. what is your solution toward that anger? because you said we can -- it's hard to shut down an angry mob, but i really would like your comment on that solution.

>> host: thank you, sir. rick schenckman. >> guest: i struggle with this, just like everybody does. we're human beings so we're going to have our instant reactions. so, i've got a partisan brain just like everybody, and when i hear favorable things about the candidates that i like, i really listen closely, and because of confirmation bias, i think, yeah, that's a really good point. when i hear bad information about somebody that i like, i think, that's not true.ss that can't possibly be right. and i dismiss it. so how do you get around that? make an end run around our own brain? if you become aware of how your brain can undermine your search for truth -- that's what i argue in the book, that we're not really after the truth. we're after the truth as steven pinker at harvard talks about, we are after the truth that

reinforces our version of reality. n how can you get around that? well, there's no magic formula. you just have to be aware at that time this is how your brain works, so you have to question everything. you constantly have to subject your own opinions to really just a real sober, honest assessment of why you believe what you believe. now, the caller also was asking about anger. how do you get around anger? well, when you're in an angry mood, if you're married, every once in a while you'll get angry at your spouse and at that moment you can't think straight. so you have to wait until you calm down and then you can reflect. that's how spouses decide to make up. you have to have that same approach in politics. don't keep listening to the same sources that just keep you

revved up and in a angry mood because you'll never have the enemy when you can sit back and calm down. so if you're watching a tv show or listening to some person on the radio who has you revved ', tune them out. take a break from it. take a week or two weeks off. calm counsel to the point where now you can think a little bit more clearly.no because when you're in the grip of anger, you cannot think straight. that is just the way human beings are built. understanding how our brain is built is what the book is all about. >> host: in february, on this program, we got a call fromm somebody named keno in lakeland, florida, who suggested that we have rick shenkman on the program, and i believe this is keno in lakeland, florida, calling in how. hi. >> caller: good morning. praise be for c-span.

yes, i read mr. shenkman's book, and let me make him aware -- they have the bipartisan working group in congress. i have recommended they take your book and have a book report for all of congress to be aware of your book. the other thing where you talk about if we dwell on anxiety that can bring about cooperation. i recommended that this bipartisan working group come up with the ten most serious problems facing the united states, the congress and the president, before they try to seek solutions, they define what the problems are that need to be addressed. i want you to be aware that i am being a citizen advocate for that group and using your book as one of my main thrusts, and i also -- i want the presidential candidates to come up with a ten most serious problems they think are facing this country, and i want the presidential candidateo to go on the booktv and recommend books that people can

read for a more intellectualal approach rather than the emotional approach. so, yes, i thank c-span for what it does for our nation and i'm so glad they had you on today, but be aware that i've asked the bipartisan congressional working group to do book report and come up with a definition of ten most serious problems facing this nation. so what might be your reaction? >> guest: well, first of all,rs thank you for telling c-span viewers they ought to read my book, an author always wants to hear that. i'm delighted c-span listened to you and that's why i'm sitting here today. that's great. can we talk about anxiety for a moment? s a lot of what i say sounds so negative. it's kind of, gee, our brain turns us into unthinking partisans. we get angry.

we can't evaluate our politicians who. we're subject to manipulation easily. want to talk about something that is positive and what they caller just mentioned, anxiety, is one of the positive things. when you are anxious, as a human being, it's a very unpleasant feeling, isn't it? something we don't want to feel anxious. but anxiety is a wonderful reeva thing. it's your brain telling you, you need to re-evaluate your impression of something. so if you have a view of the world ask the way the world works and you now have some evidence before you that, gee, the worldsen working the way i think it works, for instance, i have a belief about a particular candidate, and now i just gotll evidence that candidate actuallt is behaving in a way that is contrary to what i thought about that candidate, i thought i

understood them but maybe i didn't really understand. the. when we get that anxious feeling, we re-evaluate our opinions. most of the time we don't bothet to re-evaluate our opinions and the prone for that is that takes effort. that literally takes brain energy. your brain consumes 20% of your body's energy every single day, and what that means is your brain is constantly hooking for ways to not overwork because in requires more energy, and back in the stone age it was hard to get protein and get a lot of so the brain evolved to be extremely prudent at looking for shortcuts all the time. that's why we depth do hard, higher order, cognitive thinking in politics most of the time. our brain doesn't want us to thinkhard because more knew republics are firing and that going to consume more energy so

rather than think hard, it goes into default position and we just go with the flow and go with our normal reaction. with anxiety, our brain is telling us, stop. you can't just go with the flow. you've got to really think hard. you've got use higher order cognitive thinking of that's your brain telling you, oh, time to actually engage and think hard.en so, when you sense you're watching a political debate and you feel a little anxious, pay attention it to. that's your brain telling youu there's a mismatch between belief and what the facts are. time to re-evaluate. >> host: -- >> guest: as for the callerth seeing he is backing this bipartisan group in congress, that's wonderful. that's what is needed if we're going to ever get anything done. it's a democracy and only works when people in both parties are

at the very minimal talking to each other.s if they put up walls between them, and they only talk to their own supporters, democracy won't work. >> host: and clyde is in our vern, new york, he is anca independent go ahead, clyde, we're listening.ed to ge >> caller: what you're saying is faction. you need to get together -- is fantastic. you need to get together with tim weiss and go on a tour. here it is. i studied yellow journalism because i was broadcast student and minored in psychology, and here it is. when i -- i'd like to use a different word than what you use in your book. call troglodytes. amazing it's almost the same thing. but it's amazing because here it

is -- interject systemic racism, it's amazing.m that's wife i say you need to good to be a tour together -- >> host: clyde, who is tim weiss? >> caller: i think you had him on last sunday -- no, no. it was free speech tv. so wrote a book, and he speaks about white privilege, systemic racism, soing for and so on, and with these guys both working together, they can do a lot of constructive stuff in this country. >> host: thank you, sir. rick shenkman, any reaction? >> guest: well, somebody wants to pay to send me around the country and talk to audiences, i'm all in favor of it. i do have a day job. i run the history news network web site where historians aree

putting the news into historical perspective but i can take some time out to go on the road. >> hellen, win trop, maine, go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: good morning. was struck by a comment that author michelle goldberg made the other day on chris hayes' s show about pawer seeks and generally speaking population are adverse to people who are blatantly pawer seekers and this is tremendously magnified when the candidate or the person or the power seeker is a woman, and she used this really to explain some of the -- tried to explain some of the antipathy people have towards candidate clinton. i'm wondering if your book addresses the whole issue of gender and how this plays into the current political field and the roll of religion where we know that many religions are

subjugation of women has been part and parcel of our history, and hoping you could care to address those. thank you. >> host: go ahead, rick shenkman. >> guest: those are great points. i chose not to focus on gender. my feeling was a lot of books have been written about the importance of gender in politics, and i didn't want to throw another book on that pile. i wanted to draw attention to the four problems i identify in the book, which is the problems with curiosity, the problem with truth and our biases, the problem with empathy and soing for, and so i don't really focus on that, but i do agree withic everything you said. all very, very good points. >> host: rick shenkman you quote thomas bailey: eave foreign

policy crisis in u.s. history has shaped decisive live by public opinion. >> guest: thomas bailey was a stanford historyianphone 40 years, the author of textbooks that and i millions others using in high school, the american pageanten and also wrote a become called "public opinion --" or the man the street and public opinion. the gist of the back was if you look at almost every foreign policy crisis in our history, you will find that politicians, congress, the president, were always designing our foreign policy around public opinion, to accommodate public opinion, which makes sense. we're a republic or democracy, whatever you want to believe, a

big raging debate on the internet on that. but public offend is key. woodrow will son says if you have the public behind you, you can accomplish anything. so the problem if the public doesn't know that much but thehe politics are letting public opinion guide their foreign policy, then we wind up making blunders. so, the iraq war is just a classic example. here a president was able to gin up support for this war by playing on people's fears about 9/11, and he was able then to turn around and launch this war without even a congressional declaration of war, get -- did get a resolution of support but not a full-blown declaration 0 of war. that's a problem and almost any foreign policy cries you'll see that's a problem.ha sometimes, of course, like in world war ii, okay, pearl harbor is attacked.

the public says we have to take revenge. we have to do something. that was the right policy. but most of the time the public doesn't have an independent basis grounded in fact upon which they're making their opinion, but the politicians, whether it's based in fact or not, are usually following public opinion. they are usually slaves to public opinion. that is a problem. >> host: renee in houston, texas, we have 15 seconds. >> caller: okay, thank you very much.nt i wanted to address spirituality. don't think i heard you mention anything about that. and what a person believes in their mind is right and you're speaking so much about public opinion and what is right and what is wrong, and a lot of what people feel is right in their policies are based on their spirituality.

>> host: thank you, ma'am, rick shenkman, a 15 seconds to answer the question. >> guest: so, i believe alongn with social scientist, jonathan height at the university of virginia, that our moral values are innate and we believe what we believe about it, and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that.r just subject your moral findings to rational higher order cognitive thinking. >> host: rick shenkman, author, political animalsing are how ouh stone age brain get tuesday the way of smart politics and the found e. of the history news network. thanks for being on washington journal. >> guest: thank you very much and people can go to stone age brain.com to find out more about in the research. >> here's a look at current best selling books according to the conservative book club. topping the list is killing reagan, in which fox news host bill o'reilly, looks at how the attempted assassination of

president ronald reagan shaped his political core. former deputy assistant to reagan made the list with "true reagan." his biography of the president. donald j. trump has two books own the list. his latest, "crippled america" look with "trump, the art of the deal" first released in 1987. up next, "13 hours to" which is about the security team in benghazi. former navy seals talk about how their training and combat experiences can be applied to leadership in any organization in extreme ownership. fox news political analysts, juan williams has made the conservative book club's list with "we the people. " a collection profiles of people he thinks have the carried on the traditions of the founding fathers, including

president ronald reagan, supreme court justice thurgood marshall and martin luther king, bryan killmeade, a co-host of fox and friends is next with george washington's secret six about a spy ring in the american revolution. taya kyle shares her dealing with doing be military wife, and they're of military theory at the marine corps university, a look at radical islamic terrorism and how to fight until "defeating jihad.." you can hatch the authors on our web site, booktv.org. >> this is primarily a love

story. a love story of mine towards my late husband, and the difficulty that one has when one makes that commitment at time of marriage, in sickness and in health. vowing to support another life. another being. another person with whom you have lived for, as it turn out, i lived with john for 53 years. we were married for 54. john had parkinson's disease and as it became more and more apparent, that his parkinson's was taking him downhill, he

decided to end his life. he did it in a way that still makes me so sad because there was no and is no law in maryland which allows doctors to assist individuals who have been deemed within six months of death, as john was. there is no law that allows doctors to help those patients. john chose to stop drinking water, stop eating food, stop taking medication. now, as i'm sure many of you know, would you forgive me if i stood up and walked? >> i think so. i think we can forgive you.

[applause] >> i'm just so much more comfortable this way. it strikes me as being a little difficult but i hear a little echo and if we can get that down, that would be great. as i'm sure most of you know, you can go without food for days upon days upon days, but not without water. within about ten days, to two weeks, the organs begin to break down without water, and john chose to end his life that way, and i had chosen to write a book that i began writing on the

night he was dying. i was sleeping, trying to sleep, on two chairs by his bed, with my little dog, maxie, on my stomach, and that didn't work. so i just got up at about 2:00 a.m., and i had my ipad with me, and i began writing. i cannot tell you that there was any plan in mind at that time to continue to write, and somehow to create a book of essays or thoughts or anything of the sort, but all i know is that that night, i needed to put on paper what i w f