>> i was inspired to write this book via very strange kind of policy that we had in the city of philadelphia which was our

public transportation used to require that everybody who bought a monthly pass had to have a gender marker m for mail or f for female on their past and this created a lot of what i call sex identity discrimination within the city and in particular one transgender woman who was a friend of mine and an activist in philadelphia brought a lawsuit against the company for gender identity information because when she offered her marked pass she was turned away as the individual bus driver said you can't use this because in my opinion you are not a real woman and so she brought back a pass with an m sticker on it and the same thing happened. you are not a real man. this got me thinking you know in

that case it's pretty clear that there is no legitimate reason to have our sex identity marked on a pass to get on a bus. in the city of philadelphia that tech activism to get the sex stickers removed from this bus pass. eventually the city got rid of them but it never admitted that it had discriminated against charleen or anybody else based on their gender identity. and it really got me thinking if this is ridiculous in this instance then what about other other -- we carry around like a driver's licenses birth certificate. are they necessary?

>> well i'm going to start with with -- of montana which i'm reading and move into a reread of fools, frauds and firebrand via roger screwed 10 and then after that i will continue on with my research in the studies that i've been doing on the 1960s particularly the 6:00 p.m. the 68 election and so i began there with garry wills discussion of the conventions in miami and chicago in 68 and from there and humberto echoes frog cemetery and i will also finish up with a couple michael creighton fictions. >> those first two books you listed what are the purpose of reading those? >> the mantegna book i am reading because he is right at

the nascent period of moving into the enlightenment era. in some ways he's considered to be a prototypical humanist in some ways. i think to be educated on the western civilization you should probably read mantegna in. secondly the fools, firebrands and whatever else that roger is calling these folks if they look at the new left taking us through probably the 1920s forward and the new left and i'm very interested in that as well. >> how many books do you have going at one time? >> right now i think i've got six books going. >> how do you manage that? >> i don't sleep much. whatever you were in the mood to read, mantegna i'm mostly done with him but we have 75 or 80 pages to go but i'm taking a few

days off from him and i might sneak a little early to the frog cemetery because that's a little bit more interesting in some ways. >> you have also got your book coming out. >> i've written a couple of books and i have two books that were published. i'm working on another book right now, writing another book but i have a book called the doctrine of liberty that was the first one published, theological look at the doctrine of liberty. is there a doctrine of liberty within my faith which is the church to -- church of jesus christ of latter-day saints are the second one is and you'll probably hear more about this because jim demint started working with a group to try to get an article v mention to rewrite aspects of the united states constitution which i am adamantly opposed to when i used to fight that all the time and debate that.

i'm tired of debating i'm just going to write a book so i wrote a book and it's called the common of the common so that's the other book. >> good evening. i am barbara stauffer chief of community programs here at the museum and it's my pleasure to welcome you to an evening with david grinspoon. here at the national history museum through research exhibition programs and on line resources we help promote understanding of the natural world and our place