survivor and an american sailors first-hand account of pearl harbor. we are taking your calls, tweets and e-mails live from noon - 3 pm eastern. go to booktv.org for the complete schedule. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you all of you for coming here tonight. it really truly is a privilege for me to introduce medea to all of you. she is the reason i am on all of these committees, and the reason i am a part of the peace movement in fresno. in 2012, when she came to speak to us about her drone warfare book, i joined the movement. i joined the group out on the street and i no longer was that

person who occasionally went to the bay area, and i no longer was armchair activists. thank you medea. a little bit about her, she has been involved for 40 years. the small woman has a voice of equal rights, social justice for the entire world. is that better? >> no? i will not start again. i apologize. medea has received martin luther king jr. piece prize from the fellowship of reconciliation, the marjorie kellogg national peacemaker award, the peace foundation memorial award in recognition for her creative leadership on the front line of the antiwar movement and the

gandhi peace award from promoting and enduring peace. she is the cofounder of the woman that peace group code pink that group began to fight against the war in iraq she has found creative ways to continue to protest and bring awareness in a nonviolent way as our government has become more more violent. she has been all over the world, but with code pink she has brought awareness to the drone issue. she has been in pakistan and yemen to fight for those innocent people, children, women, men who have been killed by our drones.

that's how she brought awareness to me first and several of us here in fresno. she has also spent time in afghanistan, libya, syria, iraq. when she interrupted president obama speech while she was being carried out, he said, that voice, we all need to hear. he may have opposed what she was saying but we get to hear that tonight. with israel and palestine, she has taken numerous delegations to gaza. she has been part of the freedom and then arrested and deported in her attempts to go there, and hurt. she has been in bahrain, teargas, arrested and deported as well. go to code pink, see what she is

all about. on behalf of the islamic center, peace fresno, the, the international league for peace and freedom, palestine freedom project in the fresno center for nonviolent and progressive democrats of america, i didn't forget you, i present to you medea benjamin. [applause] so wonderful to be here and see such a beautiful crowd. just because we might have a certain gentleman called donald trump in the white house, it

actually means we have to do more organizing than ever before so i want to make sure i pass around that sign-up sheet for code pink and for any viewers. we say this is the time to make sure people who haven't been involved get involved and i also want to say that it is a great honor to speak here in this cultural center tonight. it's especially important to be here when we talk about saudi arabia. many people would say why are you always picking on israel. what about all the arab countries that are so oppressive

i realized it was not wanting to get involved in a shiite sunni split that i didn't really understand and more importantly not wanting to feed into islam a phobia that has been so terrible and around the world. we wouldn't be able to kill people with our drones if it were not for the braces them within our country and especially during down trump campaign. who knows what will happen in the white house. we have to be very careful when we look at issues related to

islam. i'm so glad they started us out looking at some of the pictures of saudi arabia and putting them in the context that my muslim friends have told me to do which is please, don't talk about the saudi ideology as a version of islam, talk talk about it as a perversion of islam because it

will. >> arise. >> all in the name --

>> a lot of u.s. companies including oil, texas, real estate, they talk about billing donald trump out twice, they have invested in companies like uber, $3.5 billion in uber and that's quite a chronic

it was called the podesta group which started originally by two brothers, tony and john. he was getting $140,000 a month. what has become the biggest factor between the u.s. is that they have become by far the largest purchaser of u.s. weapons. the amount of weapon sales is mind-boggling. we have never sold such vast sums to any country before. just under the obama administration we have's sent

$100 billion of weapons to saudi arabia. that is a massive amount of weapons. saudi arabia is propping up the u.s. military industrial complex, and what are they doing with those weapons? repressing their own people, going into neighboring people during the arab spring. they were not able to see democratic movements prevail in the neighborhood, went into bahrain where there is a beautiful nonviolent uprising among the population, using u.s. tanks, they came in and crushed that uprising. i mentioned the uprising can be found with al qaeda groups and syria and libya and iraq, but

now the weapons are being used to devastate, on already very poor country in the middle east, and that is yemen. that it is something our media does not cover enough. this is something that the american people barely even understand. now it is going on 20 months since the saudi's got involved in an internal conflict in yemen because they worried that one side was close to iran and this would give iran a foothold next door and they went in there, like george bush when he went into a rack and thought it would be quick and dirty, it wasn't. it was very dirty but it has not been quick. it has been 20 months and i said yemen was already a very poor country. you look at what the united nations is now saying, it is a catastrophic situation, not only with thousands and thousands of innocent people being killed, mostly by the bombings, but also , the destruction of the

infrastructure and millions of children severely malnourished right now. they are facing famine in yemen. there is an outbreak of cholera because the water system has been destroyed. there was a study done that's said one third of the targets have been civilian targets. marketplaces, schools, residential neighborhoods, factories, wedding parties, funerals, and this is all, not only with u.s. weapons, it's with u.s. logistical support. it's with u.s. refueling of the planes in the air, it's with u.s. help in targeting and diplomatic cover. that's why many yemenis are saying this is a u.s. war and the american people have blood on their hands. we have to understand that this is not only criminal for the people of iraq, but it is also something that is going to blow

back and affect our national security for a long time to come. i said there have been 100 $15 billion worth of weapon sales. there have been 42 different deals during the obama administration. now, congress has the legal ability to stop weapon sales if he wanted to. everyone of those weapons sales, congress sales, congress did nothing. it was only because of the devastation in yemen that some of our congresspeople have started to speak up. i want to applaud those who have done that, like chris chris murphy, the senator from connecticut, rand paul, republican from kentucky, and they said finally enough is enough. they forced a vote inside the congress and the senate. the first time that we have had such a vote in the senate and you would think that 100 senators would say of course we don't want to sell weapons to this repressive regime.

unfortunately it wasn't 100 it was 27 of them. them. it is of the beginning, barbara boxer voted the right way, dianne feinstein voted the wrong way, i have fires over there and i would hope one thing you might do after this talk is make a call to senator feinstein's office and's office and tell her no weapon sales to saudi arabia. so, i mention that saudi arabia is propping up the military industrial complex. we are in a muslim place of worship right now that prides itself on being interfaith and that is so important these days. one person of faith whose name i want to bring into the room is pope francis. i want to do that because pope francis came to speak before congress and among the things he said, some wonderful things he said was he talked about weapons. he said why are we selling weapons to people who use them

in such an abusive way. the answer is money. it's money that is drenched in blood, he said, and we are complicit if we don't speak out. we are complicit if we don't stand up to the arms industry. he said this in front of congress. a bunch of congress members got up and started clapping which i found quite ironic. the weapons industry is very clever and they make weapons in every single congressional district, and then they give money to those congresspeople for their reelection campaigns and then those congresspeople say we couldn't possibly stop weapon sales to these countries, or stop the production of a weapon system because these represent jobs in my community.

well, this is complicity. this is corruption. this is something that we, as a public who want to see our government represent our values, we have to stand up not only to the arms industry, but to the people in congress, the people who are in the white house, the people who are complicit with us selling weapons to such repressive regimes as saudi arabia. that is one major take away i want you to take with you from the stock. the other thing is to recognize that there are, as we saw on the slides, really courageous saudis who are trying to change their own government. some of them have already been executed. some of them are rotting away in saudi prisons, but many of them are looking for other means to challenge this saudi regime. the saudis that i have been talking to say, we are really

afraid, with the government not given the ability to make changes, we are going to see the violent people who want to overthrow the regime take over and things could be a lot worse than they are now because there is no civil society to fill the void. who would take over? armed groups, groups like al qaeda and isis. that's that's why they say we need reforms desperately so people start seeing that some changes possible. i mentioned that women had signed petitions calling for a listing of the guardianship system. we know there are people in the shiite community who only want to be treated like equal citizens. we know there are professors and academics who are trying to meet with some of the more forward thinking prince's and say look, we are living in an absolute monarchy, but there there are

other kinds of monarchies and other parts of the world. even in great britain they have a monarchy and people love their kings and queens and they have a ceremonial function. we need to have a constitutional monarchy. let's move toward that for an opening toward reform. these are the people that our government should be supporting, but unfortunately, whether, whether it has been a republican or democrat in office, they have been supporting the regime instead of supporting the real democrats. i say, as we look forward, we have a lot of things to do with the new administration, and i hope in the discussion session we can get into that. let's recognize that the power of the military industrial complex and power of big oil have kept us in this relationship with the saudi regime, and this is something

that we have to find a way to unite among people of different faith, to unite among people of different ethnicities, to unite among people left or right because this is not a left or right issue. in fact, sometimes it is easier to talk to conservative republicans about this than it is to some liberal democrats. let's think of this as one issue that we can work toward uniting people to say that it is way more important that we support democracy around the world, that we get ourselves off of the fossil fuel treadmill so we might have a future in this beautiful planet we live on than it is to be supporting these monarchs that have been holding onto power for so many decades. i hope, as as we try to strengthen our own democratic

process that we have seen to be so corrupt and so tainted during this last election. , we also try to change the foreign policy that has made us more of an arms dealer around the world than a peacemaker. let's say power to the peaceful at home and abroad, that's what we need, that's where were going, let's do it. thank you. [applause] >> all right, sorry i thought the microphone was on. that was awesome, wasn't it? [applause]

all right, if you have a question, and a nice peaceful manner, if if we can form a line over here, make your questions to the point, vocalize, no speeches, and then we can have time for question and answer. will spend 15 minutes or so doing that and then we will start the line for a book signing over here. if you verity book but your book. if you haven't, we have about 11 more copies and that's it and then you can get it later on but it will be signed. if you have have any questions, please make your way up here. i'm sorry we are going to keep the microphone stationary because it is being filmed so we do need to make it stationary. >> my question has to do with the most recent passing of a law in which americans consume saudi

arabia. can you explain your outlook on that? >> this is a law that the 911 family members have been fighting for for the past 15 years. they want to know how high up the chain was the complicity of the saudi government in the 9/11 attacks. we know 15 of the 19 hijackers worst saudi's, but we don't know who else was involved in it. so, the law that was passed was quite amazing. it happened on the 15th anniversary of the 911 at tach, it happened during election time , and unfortunately, president obama, after it was passed vetoed the law. he said this would give a bad precedent to other countries, he didn't use these words, but basically who said who might

want to sue us for war crimes we commit in their country. but, amazingly, congress overrode the veto that veto. so now there is a lot of pressure from the saudi government on congress people, these lobbyists i talked about who are not only going to people of the national level but they're going to the local level, to governors and state assemblies to say, we might pull out our money, and this would be very bad for the u.s. economy, you should have a redo of that. we don't know what's going to happen when congress comes back. we hope they will hold firm in these lawsuits can go ahead, because this might be the only way that not only the 911 families, but we the public can get hold of tens of thousands of documents that our government has from fbi investigations that can tell us a lot more information that we should have the right to know. >> thank you again for the presentation. i was really interested in the destruction of the holy sites,

the presentation that was mentioned, i think it's ironic, the idea that the saudi culture wants to expand its version of islam in building new mosques throughout the world, but at the same time, destroying its own fully sites in saudi arabia, do you have any rationale behind that? it just seems like it's contradictory. [inaudible] >> thank you very much. may peace be with you. as part of the wahhabi ideology is to destroy any significant building or heritage that

reflects other ideologies or faiths. examples, museums graveyards that are built into a shrine, they believe this is something against the faith and this is worshiping iraq or a place instead of god. this is their mentality. by the way. [inaudible] >> ladies and gentlemen they are breaking into cars outside. some cars have been broken into. they haven't taken anything so it must be some kind of hate crime. let's take a five-minute break and go check your cars. then come back.

we are waiting for you. we will take a few more questions and then we will conclude. i would like to repeat what happened. while we were listening to medea medea benjamin talking about saudi arabia and the united states, unfortunately, a few cars were breaking in and a few items were also stolen. i think, i think, as far as i know, three cars including medea's car. this makes me really wonder who knows her car, anyway, by the way we called the police about 20 minutes ago and we expect them to show up any minute.

[inaudible] the police are about a block away. okay. we will take two more questions and i do apologize for what happened. we really appreciate your time staying here. we will take two more questions. thank you very much. >> i just want to say something before we go to the questions. this is not new, this has been happening to islamic centers and mosques for a long time now. this is what we are going to face more often because the donald trump campaign and now the presidency has given a green light to hate. i want to say just how sorry i feel to you and to the wonderful people of this islamic cultural

center that constantly are opening up the center to dialogue and discussions about love and compassion and how we work together, how we appreciate the human family and the beautiful bouquet that we are, and to be targeted is such a violation of all of the values that we want to stand for as a nation. i feel violated, everything in my car was taken, and i feel more violated for the people who run the center who have to now face this on a perhaps more regular basis. i hope that as part of the discussion we have, we can talk about how we form rings of solidarity. how we protect our mosques, how

we protect our brothers and sisters, how we protect the muslim community and the immigrant community, the gay community, how we protect all of the people who will, unfortunately, be more victimized than they have been. this is not a pretty immediate future that we face. on the other hand, i do want to say that i have never seen such an outpouring of objection as we have seen since the election happened. this is coming particularly from young people who say this is not the future that i want. whether donald trump is going to get out there and say hate speech is bad, attacking mosques is wrong, attacking immigrants is wrong, we need, we need to be out there saying it loud and clear, and not just saying it. we have to form ways of making

sure it happens. i remember right after 9/11, i lived in san francisco, one of the most progressive parts of this country. there. there was an attack on our neighborhood grocer because he was a muslim. you know what we did? we slept in his grocery store night after night after night. we slept there. we said we will not let this happen in our community. we started printing up no heat zones and we put them all over the place. were going to have to go back to that again. that's what we have to do. let this be a warning, let this be a signal, let this be not a call to feel oh, but just the opposite. but this invigorate us to recognize what is happening in this country, what's happening to our brothers and sisters who are most victimized by the hatred that's been going on for

way too long and let's make a pledge tonight that we will stand up for everyone who is being unfairly victimized, we will stand up against hate and misogyny and islam a phobia and anti- immigrant sentiments and we will do more than we have done before. :

>> this. >> the thought flashes across my mind that we all say that we have to work together and here is an opportunity to focus on where the terrorism is really coming from so we can help to differentiate between the muslims in what is considered to be somehow ridiculously belated and therefore i am wondering working without representatives to force them to focus tromps energy

to oppose saudi arabia and its positions were and how can we move into double legislative process agitation and all quicks 72 get outside of the white house and how do we do that quick. >> there is something said donald trump has said on the campaign that is positive to have done better relationship with russia is extremely important because we do not want to go to war with russia. and to have him say that the attack on iraq was a horrible mistake and the bush should ministrations knew there were new weapons of mass destruction and lied to the american people is important to hear donald trump has said the saudis are mostly e.u. responsible for extremism so holds him to that so i agree we have

to see if there are ways to work with both sides with another vote in congress to get both the senators from the great state of california if we can push a lever is in doubt whitehouse to see we're the source of terrorism is coming from but also recognize that donald trump has said many terrible things that torture is okay and it is okay to kill the families of suspected terrorist. he talked about with the expansion of the military and then need bomb after

saying israel and palestine will be neutral he said no that he would make jerusalem the capital and move the u.s. embassy there the settlements should keep ongoing he has set a lot of contradictory things and we don't know what we are working with their food we are working with reno the weapon in manufacturing sector was soaring after donald trump won. >> jim walton. i heard you on the of radio today thank you for your concern. but my question relates to what i heard on the radio today and you touched on it

tonight but today on the radio to receive 2 million votes more than another person because of the system at one time, many women voted at the time? so why that decision like me and others if you could pursue a different climate where those who are like me or women bore -- or to do that electoral college to let the new takeover maybe we would that have the situation retracing today? >> certainly our democracy is not one that i would wish on other countries. there is no reason to have an electoral college should

be abolished. no reason for the parties to have superdelegates. that should be abolished no reason to have voters suppression long lines even ryle live inside of washington d.c. the lines were so long i had to come back three times to vote. elections should be a holiday. there should be a system not winner-take-all representative where you get the 5% of the votes and you get 5% of the seat. from third parties have access to the debates they should not be organized and run by the parties themselves. and get money out of politics you cannot have a democracy with the corruption.

there are so many things we need to change about the system to hold our heads up high to say that we recognize that model of democracy i thought things would really changed and now as happened again but we cannot wait for a low listenership of the democratic party they seem to go away - - along with this it has to come with the grass-roots now there is the petition for millions of people to sign-on and i hope we bring that energy to washington d.c. to the democratic party and the republican party to force some of these fundamental changes in our system. >>.

>> [inaudible] >> thanks for coming. years ago as a student at the university of california coming to speak there was repeated bomb threats that day. that told me the veracity of what he was about to tell us . but i just want to tell my fellow people that this is the first time i am blessed to come to the islamic center here. the importance that this

event had showed me it is a unique place. i already knew medea by reputation and in particular want to comment to the white middle-class people that are here not to choose assimilation for what is coming but now when we see something like this to huddled next to this organization more. as we have attacks on undocumented -- [applause] >> i just want you to expand on what you said at one

point it is easier to talk to conservatives and progressives about these matters with that line of reasoning that you used the. >> we have been going up to some of the very religious christians in congress with my friends and women to go off whenever we point them out and she says are you a good christian? [laughter] he will say of course, . then she says why are you selling weapons to the only country in a world where it is illegal to build a church ? that leaves them dumbfounded . then she says might die, to your office to talk to you more about this? can i set up the meeting?

we have been doing that ended this important to do and we don't know how well the works because we have not had a vote again but this is an issue where we show the hypocrisy to put people on the spot to make it personal. that is one example of this approach we have been using. >> many people have compared the situation of apartheid in south africa. [inaudible] >> many of the palestinians at work with the use that

comparison and i appreciate using that kind of language because i think that is something that makes people up to the gravity of the situation. and actually want to learn more about it. and the fact the conservative jewish groups in this country are so opposed it is indicative that this gets to people. it is quite marvelous that the black lives matter platform uses the word apartheid and murder and genocide and that makes many people of the more conservative jewish community extremely angry causing a rift between some of them and the black lives matter folks but they say this is how we see it we have seen that with our own

eyes. we come back to speak our truth so we have to use the words reflect the gravity of the situation to make people reflect on why we using those words. in closing, a great thing to to the cultural center and the people who opened the space for us. this is a night to that is very profound and very sad. i will not leave here without talking to you about what we can do to show our extreme sorrow for what happened tonight. not as individuals who lost but as the community that has been violated and what we can do to work with the with the future and i am happy to keep coming back and sleep of the four right here if me be.

[laughter] because i love you and want to share that love. [applause] >> i would just like to lattimore's sentence -- add one more sentence with awareness of this situation changed and the people of south africa got their freedom. this is what we need to do with the work that medea is leading to focus on the fact

that tourism is created and supported in saudi arabia unfortunately because of their alliance and their power base continue to target muslims and americans and europeans everywhere. we need to work to change the situation to what the world know in a few years with freedom and democracy in saudi arabia so think q medea to bring this issue about one united states you have our support and again i apologize for a happened but for me this is more important.

i with like to inform you they would like to pay for the damage. [applause] out to cover generosity and kindness she is not accepting a payment. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] in. >> we are at sun devil stadium in tempe arizona. me will learn more about the rich literary scene. up next what was discovered by accident in the book

accidental genius. >> i had known before started to write the book i knew many about these accidental scientific discoveries and i had learned about them with some degree of detail but i had not really looked at them analytically like what makes it possible. so i began to look in more detail with their lab books or the papers or the reminiscence that happened many years after the fact when the book was put together a realize there were three elements that had to be a part of every accidental scientific discovery the first separation. many people have evidence that science said this is cool but because they were not prepared to recognize

what was unusual they did not pay attention to it. the other is the actual circumstance whatever the accident or opportunity is to create or make an observation. and the third element besides is you know, what you we're doing you know, what to expect you are in us circumstances so know it is very easy to toss that decide to say that is interesting everybody else has said job to do. maybe they are investigating

a new die for a coat but it did not occur to them to see if that could be used to cure disease. with the effect like that to say that is not my job by working on a diet behalf of the desire to follow up with the observation you have made. >> everybody has heard of louis pasteur because in one very major since the father of vaccination he is the first to created a vaccine or had an idea of white things were working so he created a scenario with the framework for all modern medicine really. louis pasteur had a controversial theory that diseases were caused by microorganisms. when it occurs the very

debilitating and dangerous diseases also very economically important for agriculture as it was killing a person -- significant percentage of livestock and he said i believe it is due to the infectious nature. so what he believed to be that infectious agent he would make a soup and grow the organism and then he would take that and inject that into the chicken it died. so this was proof that this organism was causing the disease. but people were not that easily convinced of the strength of his argument so he had to do it over and over.

now is time for summer vacation so he says i have a batch of infectious agent we will inject all of the chickens so they go on vacation just as the employees do they put up their feet it is time for my vacation. the assistance took off without injecting the broth and come back to weeks later the broth is there and he said what did he do this? and wish you would have injected them ahead of time he's and i can do it now so they did now it was two 1/2 weeks old none of them died they got sick but none of them died. he said he ruined the profs

now make a new batch and make twice as much because now we are behind schedule so he made a new batch and infected a bunch of chickens some that were already injected and some that were not. every chicken that was not earlier injected with the old prof died but every single chicken that was already injected with the old broth lived. and he said do this again. and he repeated the experiment so returns out he had the wrong idea for why his injection was working but now we know when the body detects the infectious agent it will manufacture weapons against the agent. so normally infections agent

is deadly your body is a response is lower than the agent can work yang you get sick or you die. but if you slow it down to weekend ahead of time it is not as healthy and cannot fight back as well then your body's defenses can't get ahead so now the next time you get that your body is prepared so you inject someone with a weakened version of the agent now we have a fancier way to do that but that is a version of the agent your body gets used to it when the real thing comes along your body says i am ready you are gone . but it was all because of that accidental discovery that would not have happened if they did not take a

vacation so his accidental discovery is interesting certainly without not ramifications' but one of the interesting things about the accidental discovery is the person who makes the observation needs to pursue that observation to was logical and. he had two guys working for him whenever he said went it is a lot tougher in the corporate world not only today but in 1938 roy was working for dupont and his job was to make new refrigerant like freon with the cfc. they had up process there was some well-defined chemistry to make and then you put these elements

together under pressure they were trying different things to get something to make a good compound for the refrigerant and the motors and other compressors. that was his job. one day they left the batch sit overnight and they opened the gas bottle and nothing comes out. he thought it leaked. right there he could have said to throw the ball allowed to start over but what if it didn't? way the ball and it weighed just as much as it should have with everything in it. it didn't leak but there's

no gas was going on? he unscrewed the top so a little bit of shredded coconut type of potter came out then they saw it in half and is a white powder to coach the outside of the bottle. his job is to make it cassius refrigerant to be used that they can now sell to make money in their refrigerators and other things with that capability. but he went to the boss and not said this material is cool. so he was able to talk to his bosses and he has the curiosity and the gumption to say this looks interesting. so what he made was teflon.

now we think of that most commonly in terms of the nonstick pan. but that was the nonstick material but also with a wire insulation and similar products but in the 30's there was another problem the world was just discovering atomic energy and one of the things that they discovered was uranium comes with fluoride it is very toxic and caustic and it eats through anything. but if you have a process to push this chemical through a factory operation you have

to have the seal and a valve and a joint and it is the rubber that you make those out of and it is toxic stuff and radioactive you need to have some type of material with to surfaces against each other but the teflon is so slippery by resistant chemically it is a perfect your answer for that problem that was affecting the world at that time and united states in particular and this is again simply because he had the preparation. he was a chemist in new when he was looking for. he had the opportunity to make the conditions just

right to make this material. easily he could not bad that desire to follow-up and he could have ignored the job but he knew there is something interesting the was a just tim but to say we should take a look at this so desire came through and that is why we have teflon in the world today. so accidental discovery is the discovery of x-rays. discovered 1895 and two of knowledge the scientist one of the reasons it was the discovery because they make it very clear you need a lot more than separation an opportunity but the desire

as well. . . take that and then you could see this being of something which we call a ray because they had no idea what it was. now we know they were electrons,

but at the time they had no idea many people were investigating these rays, but it turns out something else was happening as well, in addition to the capital raise, there was another kind of radiation that was coming from this. they put some photographic plates down and saw there was an outlying of an object on these photographic plates and he said those are from the castlereagh's and he said i will take a look and see what these things are. if you put them in a magnetic field, you put a magnet underneath it, we set with these things bend, no they won't bend. they don't go through very much. if you put a piece of paper,

their book, didn't go beyond. yes it will go through a piece of paper. he did a series a series of experiments over six weeks that it has been said that it six weeks he learned everything that would be known about x-rays for the next 100 years. there are other things that have been learned since then but he did such an exhaustive investigation for those six weeks. he buried himself in it and by the time he was done he had a complete understanding of the operation of x-rays but he didn't understand everything and in this sense he was lucky. what he did not realize at the time was that at x-rays are ionizing radiation which means when they hit living material or nonliving material, they will knock off pieces, they kind they kind of destroy it a little bit and bit by bit, over time can add up and be dangerous so luckily he did all of his

experiments in a landline darkroom. he did that to keep light out. what he didn't know was that he was also protecting himself from the dangerous effects of the x-rays. over the next couple decades, people were exposed to these and began to develop lesions on their hands and other things because of that, but, x-rays continued to be used as a medical viable important tool, very important for diagnostics. nowadays we've learned methods to significantly reduce the dose by making the sensitivity much higher, but without x-rays the whole science of medical imaging would not be anywhere near where it is today if it weren't for the six weeks that they spent digging into this. one of the interesting things about it is he not only got some degree of fame for this, which he did not really enjoy, he does not like the fact that in germany, or germany, or he did

not like the fact that in germany, he wanted them just to be x-rays, but not only did he get that fame, but all these other folks come out of the woodwork and say i saw that too, and they had. they had written in their notebook spread what do they do with it? nothing. they just said that was funny and they left it. so, this is one of the things that is difficult for people who aren't in the scientific field, they say he was just lucky. you can be just lucky. it takes a lot more than that. you have to have the preparation to see that something unusual has happened. you have to have the opportunity to see the unusual thing, whatever it happens to be, and part of that is the more you look at things, the more you will see, but you need to also have that desire. people outside scientific and

technological field think of the role of chance, they think of it as winning the lottery. you're gonna win the lottery and that's why he made this discovery. no, you cannot do it a must you first put in all background work to be able to understand the basics of what should happen and when something happens that shouldn't happen, you have to know enough to question it, and you have to have the desire to follow it up. that's why his story of x-rays is such an exciting one. the more that we prepare ourselves with a baseline of knowledge for whatever it is we are doing, the easier it is for us to identify when things are unusual. once you are in a situation where you are given an opportunity to see something unusual, now it's really in your hands. you've prepared yourself, you worked hard, you had the chance for observation, the hand of fate stepped in and showed you something and now, do you have

the desire to follow it up. it could be something just as simple as you play a sport and something happens and just accidentally you do something and you say that really worked, and now you say well, but that's not the way i'm supposed to do it or, you follow it up. you say. you say i'm going to see if i can really make this work. i think that happens and we can apply those principles in many different ways in our lives and enriched ourselves by being open to following those chance opportunities that present themselves to us. >> here's a look at some authors recently featured on book tv afterwards, our weekly author interview program. editor at large for the guardian, gary young discusses his investigation of gun violence in america. washington post recalls the career of former federal reserve alan greenspan.

in the coming weeks on afterwards, harvard business school professor eugene will explore the motivation of white-collar criminals. georgetown university philosophy passer will look at the flaws in the democratic system. also coming up, john happ begins environmental professor will report on industrial meat production. this weekend, george mitchell explores the potential for peace between israel and palestine. >> while i was in the region i met many times separately with benjamin not in yahoo and then ion sec. clinton were the only two people present when the two of them met on four occasions in september 2010. i argued the following to each. my argument was that israel is now in a position of unparalleled strength.

this is a good time to get involved in negotiations and be prepared to make the kind of concessions that inevitably are required to reach an agreement between two sides so bitterly divided. i made the argument that in 1947, the united nations proposed a partition of the region to create two states. israel accepted it, the arabs rejected it, and the and the first of several wars began, each of which was won by israel with increasing military dominance. i don't think there is a reasonable arab leader today who would not welcome the partition which was rejected in 1948, but

it doesn't exist anymore, and it's not coming back. you haven't accepted other offers that have been made because you regard them as unfair, but the offers aren't going to get better. you have to sit down, negotiate and get the best agreement you have which you may not think is fully fair, but you have to build on it. afterwards airs on book tv every saturday on ten pm and sunday at nine pm eastern. you can watch previous programs on our website booktv.org. >> now we are joined by author and the five host dana perino, here is her most recent book, let me tell you about jasper, how my best friend became america's dog. a lot of people would take issue with you calling your dog america's dog. i >> i don't blame them, but i don't call him because i think he's the number one dog in america. everyone's dog is numb o