i'm enjoying it so far. >> if viewers want to follow you on social media, what can they do so? >> i'm on twitter at jasonriley jasonrileywjs. >> jason riley joining us on book tv in-depth, we thank you for the conversation. >> thank you. .. ..

national archives foundation which supports her education and outreach activities and there is a gaggle of members of the board of the national archives foundation in the theater. nice to see you. check out archives foundation.org and to join them on line. a little-known secret i tell everyone no one has ever been turned down for membership from the national archives foundation. some of you think of archives as a place for dead people. writers who have not spent much time and fall back on adjectives like dusty musty, or

crumbling much to the education of archivists and preservationists. some say the riches are buried. can study and of lifeless remnants of history, archives are filled with many lives, billions of pages contain stories of payments of ordinary people who intersected with recorded history. mo rocca tells a story of hidden records and send them into the world. with "mobituaries: great lives worth reliving" he looks at the lives of men and women, those well-known and those now forgotten and shares their story for a new audience. mo rocca is a correspondent for cbs sunday morning, host of the henry ford innovation nation and creator of the cooking channel, my grandmother's ravioli. i saw 3 videos of grandmothers

making ravioli and it is wonderful. he is a frequent panelist on national public radio's his weekly radio so wait, wait don't tell me. he began his career as writer and producer for the award-winning pbs children's series and spent four seasons as a correspondent on the comedy central at the daily show with jon stewart. as an actor on broadway, the 25th annual putnam county spelling be which i saw, he is an author of all president's pets about white house pets and their role in presidential decisionmaking. now comments. rita braver is a national correspondent for cbs morning where she reports arts and culture to politics in foreign policy. before joining cbs sunday morning, white house correspondent for four years and spent a decade at cbs news chief law correspondent, won 9

national emmy awards, included one presented by congressional radio intelligent correspondence association and star award for american women in radio and television. please welcome mo rocca and rita braver. [applause] >> thank you. can you believe they are doing this on a friday night? after this, go get a life. this is what passes for wild. it is such a pleasure to interview mo rocca and it is

likely to be a hostile interview. if that is what you are here for i hate to disappoint you and we are going to get to this great book called "mobituaries: great lives worth reliving," very clever. but you are here because you want to know about mo rocca, the man. you. off in washington outside of the city. i was a city kid. what you like as a kid. >> i was it shut in for a lot of it, i memorized tv guide, granted this was pre-cable, there were not many channels but i loved tv until my parents threw me into the backyard.

they thought they had only two children. my middle brother larry said it was all right. and i spent a lot of time in the backyard teaching assets has one does. >> you went to georgetown press. >> you may have heard of it. >> the same school as brett kavanaugh and i wondered if your experience was similar to his. >> during my confirmation hearings it got a little contentious, never went to the fool senate. i had a great time in high school. i loved my teachers, i am grateful my parents sent me to georgetown prep and had a great expense with the jesuits. i wish i could tell you

something that would help my book if it made headlines here. >> nothing to report. that was my last correspondence. >> the theater program wasn't great. i have been told it is better now. >> let's talk about that. it is clear you have a passion for broadway shows and us presidents and you honed those things. >> i think i wonder, it seems to me that growing up in washington, a taste for politics, and i wonder if the gates of the white house are the equivalent of what would be like for a kid growing up in la outside paramount studios. not a little bit of magic, but interest in it.

you do feel that way and the president, the chief executive is almost above the title movie star in a way. the case for old movies came from my father, wanted to hear that. and i always like that. my friends, parents, and my parents proceeded that and i grew up watching a lot of black and white old movies with my father. and and my memories not playing tricks on me. the next day they played to catch a thief and took me to

see to catch a thief with cary grant and grace kelly. that -- what was the third thing. >> >> i went to boston. and frequently in drag. what did you get that. >> pretty much all student run and when you're i cowrote a roll and acted in a law four years. >> you can find it online.

>> just like a lot of what is ghastly. me as a woman is really ghastly. when it was student run, let's put on a show, there are professionals involved but we hired them and it was all box office revenue that paid for it. to make each week of the run, it was a creative experience. harvard had a fairly small, conservative curriculum, couldn't major in drama but it was just as well but that is where i put my energies. >> you saying, you dance, you appeared and you were in south pacific. did you think we would have a career in showbiz.

>> you and your deserved accolades, some journalists don't love hearing this, meaning this, and sunday morning, in a continuum with performing on stage and writing for wishbone. when interviewing somebody, i would like to give my goal, best supporting actor, not:*blooge >> i am fine. >> to engage with an audience is creating a relationship. >> i will jump ahead because i

find myself wondering, this wonderful resume of yours which i know about and was thinking about coming here to talk to you. why does someone like you want a job like mine then that is all i can do. i can't do anything else. >> we are on a pretty great tv show and it is like going back to college and taking only electives which i wish i had only done the first time around. one week for me and for you, history of the pencil, the next week the assassination of president garfield, the next week - i am doing a piece on snails for our annual food show.

>> the a lot of eating. >> most of the escargot you are getting have been long dead. that is what you - the variety pack, you didn't like the big box about subject matter, sugar snacks and froot loops. >> you are funny. do you take it down when doing a piece? do you say i have to believe myself because i'm going to be on national television? >> yes, i think so. different pieces call for different - i try to stay in the moment. i will say this, a vocal coach,

helping me with addition songs, audition for musicals and singing a song for how to succeed in business without really trying. i was very charactery, the second leap of the roles. the company way, where the company is there i will stay, the scheming number 2. this vocal coach turned to me in the middle of it, looked at me, i will never forget this, be easy to take. and i can remember the moment. she was a vocal coach, she said -- what do you mean? you don't have to cram it down your throat. they will get it. i'm still working on that but it was a great piece of advice.

the audience is smart, go get it. don't try so hard. when you are in an interview and invested in it and immersed in it and it comes naturally. >> under the auspices of sunday morning, you started a podcast called mobituaries. i remember when you told me about this, you said you see dead people. >> my friend bill said to me. >> i always wondered if you thought of the title first and then do something with it. >> mo is a very convenient name for different things. thank god my parents didn't name me see salt. that wouldn't work. i want to do something with

mobituaries. obituaries are profiles of people. it is endlessly refillable, so many possibilities. i thought, and i on mobituaries. i don't remember the working title. >> everyone is here because you have listened to a mobituaries but we are ready to look at one on video and this is one that i loved when you first did it because i didn't know anything about it but this was a piece about the original siamese twins and we are ready for the video if we could get it going. >> this week on mobituaries, the original siamese twins, chang and anger bunker. they were born in siam, now

time land, connected at the sternum by a four inch-long band of flesh. they set sail for america and became two of the first celebrities of the 19th century. >> they would have been celebrity whatever, people magazine. >> they are an early version of what would become known as a traveling freak show. >> the boys would do things together. >> how did they do a back flip? >> very -- >> when they settled in the mountains of north carolina their story gets really interesting. >> they didn't want to risk their lives in display. they were normal young men who wanted to have a family. >> the twins married two sisters and between them fathered 21 children. >> the outhouse is down the hill.

>> the outhouse -- >> two - >> i met some of the twins -- the descendent of the twins who reunite to celebrate their legacy. >> the youngest bunker here. >> look at him. >> they tell me their ancestors, extraordinary tale of grit and courage. >> they are the ultimate immigration story. the place where somebody could build a successful life and they came here with nothing. >> i remember when it ran first, how did you do that? >> in the book and the podcast

for each topic, to trust my instinct, something i felt a personal attachment to or genuine excitement. when i was little there were three things that would always excite me or get my attention. quicksand, tarantulas, or hearing about conjoined twins. you hear about the birth of them and something in us hardwired in us, - my mother and listed with the podcast, wasn't sure she wanted to listen to it. she ended up liking it and i liked their story because they were indentured servants. >> how did you know to do this? >> i found out about the

reunion that takes place every year, the bunker family reunion and i thought it sounded interesting so we looked into it. and it is featured in that read a summary of this book. and in north carolina, the home of andy griffith, the land of mayberry, seen as the quintessential american story but they are the quintessential american story because they come over, indentured servants. they win their program, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, the first entertainers in america. they settle down against all odds. they marry sisters. they have these children and they own slaves. that was the part of the story that you are with them and then you hit a brick wall and i

wanted to love you completely and it is a more important story and makes it a more american story. the good, the bad, and the ugly, all of it. >> did you think in terms of a tv story first or a podcast first that would turn into a tv story? >> a podcast. it is something that is going to be satisfying at 30, 40, even 50 minutes. somewhere close to an hour. the longer ones have done better. i know we are in a culture where we think no one has attention spans, everything is really short. it is heartening our first season, the three most popular ones were the three longest. >> do you have a process for building a podcast that you do each time or was there a way of

doing it? >> it changed from very small team mega markets, i work closely with her but we have been trying after a few interviews to decide what is the central question that is going to be answered with audrey hepburn for instance. there were a few personal connections at herald square in 1992 which he walked by my counter before she died and people were like it is audrey hepburn. even if you had cell phones back then you wouldn't have shoved your hand in front of her face, you knew not to do that. i noticed the rise of social media she was trending regularly. what is it about her? can we answer the question why she who was a big star, her career was only 14 years long, there were other stars bigger

than she was who aren't remember the same way. >> breakfast at tiffany's. >> there is a yearning and gratitude and her two sons told me it was almost starving to death in nazi occupied harlem that gave this quality the punches through on the screen, studios tried to imitate her. other actors were beautiful and talented and didn't have the same effect. >> i was going to wait and do this later in the conversation, but one of the clips we have pertains to that audrey hepburn moment but if our video people are ready we could roll the second clip. what do you think. >> the new york times -- were you aware the day of your inauguration audrey hepburn died?

>> you didn't know that? >> it was a fairly busy time. i didn't sleep two days. >> you drove her down. she didn't get on the front page the got a little leafer. audrey happen is that. >> he was only 63. i remember how younger i thought she was. i didn't think about it. >> back here, it is an express. >> she was amazing. i loved her. i loved roman holiday. i loved sabrina. i liked the remake because i loved the first one so much. >> that is what i love about you. you are thinking you have a story about audrey hepburn and suddenly there pops up bill

clinton. the book is full of these wonderful little surprises. besides these interesting stories about interesting people it is kind of a weird tour of mo rocca's mind which is the reason i liked it so much and there is a whole section in the book that is so great, people who coincidentally died on the same day. want to give me some examples of that? >> jim henson and sammy davis junior died on the same day, they should have spread it out by day. that was unfortunate. mahatma gandhi and orval right, and it was an assassination, a banner headline.

orval right, the first successful flight, he was down below the fold. annette been a cello and margaret thatcher died on the same day. they have very invincible lives. i try to a man or a freaky friday where they switch places maggie thatcher stars or something like that which is an actual title. >> that is an interesting thing. >> lung cancer taped a message to people, and anti-smoking message. that was a fairly new thing. who's just sort of dominated. not that it is a competition but it kind of his. ross perot died the same day. >> michael jackson and farrah fawcett. pour farrah.

it shows you how we work in our programs. for 5 other people did michael jackson's story. >> they thought you were doing that. audiences are smart and can see into a person who has been in the public eye for long enough. and their penna days. there was something decent about her and the way she dealt with her cancer at the end. cutting off her hair in public, she could have hidden the way and obviously michael jackson was a bigger story but farrah. >> we knew she had been sick but michael jackson was a big surprise. we kind of jumped ahead. i didn't ask the question i

wanted to but the big question about this book. what i have thought about it, tell us a little bit about why you decided to write the book, give us a sense of what is in it? >> it is different kinds of death. i wanted the book. i try and all my pieces and you do this too, to balance the protein with the carbs. i wanted fun. that is the carbs, and the protein which is the substance and the surprise so that a chapter about the death of sitcom characters, your favorites like the two darrens and chuck cunningham and adobe's mother when the series started but also makes you

think about suspension of disbelief. i have everything from the death of the fantastic which is the death of the belief in dragons. i was reading a tom paine biography, death of a forgotten funding father, very underrated founding father and the parenthetical that mentioned that in 1735, carl nas the swedish botanist went to hamburg which was then independent city state for an exhibition of a 700 hydro. everyone in europe was talking about the 7 headed hydra, it was a picasso show, a mob scene. he showed up there and this isn't a 7 headed hydra. it is a bunch of snakeskin sewn together with a weasel skull and monkey got stuffed in. it is not real. god would not create a creature with more than one head which now i am thinking anyway. chang and eng were two

different people. very soon after this belief people had for millennia that dragons and creatures like dragons were real. that deserves a mobituaries, a commemoration in that moment. >> the book is how many of the things in the book that you have already done and how many are things you are thinking of doing podcasts on. >> 75% of the book is new material not in the context. and putting this together. >> you say you are sad you can't write one about barbra streisand because she is still alive. and the you ever find yourself

thinking i can't wait for that person's life? >> not far for us. >> i have thought about people who would make good mobituaries. >> like you are interviewing someone? >> know, there are people i interviewed the when the time comes it would be an honor to come more rate a person like that because i love that, that person has an extraordinary story. >> do you ever start to do a mobituaries on someone and say this person would make a great profile and then find out they are not really that interesting and you put it aside to think of how to do this later?

>> it wasn't because she wasn't interesting because she really is. i had this idea and couldn't quite execute it, about nelly bly, the rate muckraker who spent ten days in a mad house and went to an island in the east river. i will get you to go straight. i had this idea it could be written as a screenplay treatment and if it didn't quite work, if there is a sequel i would like to do that because her story is amazing and based on jules vern's 80 days around the world, went around the world and beat him. >> you got to be a journalist. >> that is total oscar bait. that will when you and oscar. probably somebody like that too.

>> you referenced tom paine and i thought since we are here in the national archives, our mutual friend who got an advanced copy of the book, ask about tom paine, most of us her little at about tom paine, the writer of common sense, what happened to him after word was news to me so talk a little bit about that. the substance of it is so fascinating. >> tom paine -- it was published 6 months before the declaration of independence and it galvanized -- to support a break with the crown. common sense did more than that. before common sense the colonists viewed themselves as

virginians or new yorkers, not as americans. american was a derogatory term. he rebranded it with common sense. so it was also the way he wrote it. most of the country was illiterate at that point and it was meant to be read out loud. it sold -- there are varying estimates but it is a pretty safe bet that based on the population at the time, the biggest selling american publication in history and yet when he died only six people showed up at his funeral, three river housekeeper and her two children and the obituary at the time, very paltry obituary read in part, he had lived long, done some good and much harm and in the book i give pr advice to how he could have been a first-tier founding father. one of the things he did was when he went over to support

the french revolution and was thrown in jail because he was a man of such conviction, he was against capital punishment and they loved that. cutting off heads with crisp efficiency and he was thrown in jail and the other founding fathers wanted nothing to do with him, they didn't help him so he wrote an open letter trashing george washington and then wrote age of reason where he refuted the divinity of christ. father of this country, son of god, you got to know your audience so he was alienating everybody even though most of the founding fathers were deist as he wasn't agreed with him but what i found, talking to one of his great biographers, a lot of it, he had one setting. he was a revolutionary. the others were revolutionaries who became statesmen who eventually worked the

georgetown cocktail party circuit. he had one setting. he's the guy at dinner you just want to say i get it but can we just give it a rest? we talked about reality tv for ten minutes and he was incapable of that. ultimately i don't think he would have cared he wasn't a first-tier founding father which is the beauty of tom paine. >> so many stories like that about people who you either care about but didn't know things about or people, which is more interesting, people you never knew you cared about but you make us care about them. >> did i make you care about lawrence welcome? >> i happened to have watched lawrence welcome the child with my grandmother and on the pole, with my sisters with whom i real mother applauded. it was touching for me. there are so many great people.

so what do you hope readers will get? >> i hope readers will be delighted because delightful is a kind of word my father loved to use. not enough importance or value is given to it. i hope people idea lighted by it, have fun with it and i hope topics of the seam heavy and are important like the black congressman or construction, the pocket of history that is forgotten, will go down easy and won't seem like we're learning about reconstruction, sitting in a classroom. i like to take challenging topics and make them go down easy and take topics that seem like they are going to be fun and busy and make you go i didn't expect to choke up over

the story of billy harder. i have been gratified the first podcast of the second season is out now. i talked to president jimmy carter about billy and it is a poignant story and a funny story but a poignant story. >> when i saw the story and read it, i kept thinking of how when i worked as a producer behind-the-scenes and when you set up shop billy would always drop by the trailer with a sixpack of beer even before that. just wanted to hang out. >> what was his personality like? >> he was both complementary of jimmy and happy to put jimmy down a little bit and i think honestly i have interviewed president carter and it wouldn't have occurred to me to do a story about billy now but

it is worth reading. the fact that mo rocca has been to tgi friday's on 5 continentss. >> i tweeted that out. was i violating news standards? i tweeted it out, we will fly you to australia or let you dedicate our new antarctica to tgi friday'ss. >> when you are writing this you talk about journalism versus the personal side. i loved all these old personal asides in the book but i wondered why you decided to include them because in many ways the book is journalistic and we frequently and privilege are only interrupted by your musings on whoever you might be writing a piece about. >> i hadn't really thought

about - it felt like the right thing to do. it felt like if i wanted to share my perspective in my story, judiciously, because it is a history book and seemed like the right way to do it and i think of like that quote from sunday in the park with george, everything you do, let it come from you, then it will be you and i thought the story of elizabeth taylor and their advocacy on behalf of people living and dying with age was told. >> say the name of the chapter. >> celebrity for their thoughts on the line. i wanted to talk about celebrity to put themselves out there like melina dietrich.

>> real serious historical film. >> yes. marlena dietrich's story is a great one. i remember as a screen star. >> that was one i didn't know. we are going to go to questions in a minute. you say in the intro to the book that almost everyone eventually ends up forgotten. i know where you got it. >> i got it from you. >> you got it from someone i interviewed. >> i thank you for this because in the introduction to the book, in 2002 you interviewed nora afrin about a musical called imaginary friends based on the rivalry between mary mccarthy and lillian hellman. i remember this piece and you saying to nora in the middle of the piece how do you want to be

remembered and she kind of laughed and said remembered? these two women were incredibly famous. they have been gone 10 or 12 years and no one knows who they are. i don't expect to be remembered at all. cut to last year when i was working on the podcast for audrey hepburn. i wanted to use a piece of the interview i had done, where she had a great story. a small group of people who work on the podcast but all the people under the age of 35, really smart people had no idea who nora efrain was and she had only been dead for five years. everyone is forgotten and i find that kind of liberating in a way. >> you are doing your job for these great figures.

you have this weird ability to make us care about things we never thought we cared about. >> especially with the people, not so much for things, but pressure and the station wagon. >> which have so much in common. >> imagine otto von bismarck writing a station wagon. you would need a sunroof for that. i try also, i realize and i thought about this with billy carter, to be compassionate with the past. to cut the past some slack because there's a tendency to disqualify people from the past. i talk to -- here is a name drop i am happy to do with

doris kearns goodwin, it was preempted a few weeks ago but doris kearns goodwin said she lit up when she brought this up. fdr should have allowed more jewish refugees in the country. the internment of japanese americans is a terrible thing but brought us to world war ii, brought us to the great depression. she said simpler things about abraham lincoln. i air on the side of generous. our colleague new charles also but mary lou - didn't get to meet them but mary lou said charles chorale said it is okay to like the person you are interviewing. i feel i like all the people i liken this book. >> we can do that.

we have the great audience. we promised to take your questions. there is microphones leaves the only thing i ask is to come up with questions, not speeches. >> the biggest round of applause. >> come on. >> someone is making his way out. i will ask you -- i'm sure everybody asks you, we know you have a soft spot for audrey hepburn. is that your favorite? >> is that my favorite? it is one of my favorites, and john quincy adams post presidency, a lackluster terms in office but had extraordinary lives on either side. >> let's start over here.

>> i was just thinking as you were talking, that would be a great opportunity to go cross-country and interview people, especially with your grandmother's ravioli and other things. >> it would be a great idea and i would drive. >> that was the missing link. >> my impression is the way you described it, you have a more indoorsy kind of guy and watch a lot of tv did you come out of that and feel comfortable performing in front of people? >> i always had an impulse to perform. my fifth grade teacher is here.

but she is a therapist. i was in the next - i recall the performance of disruption fueled by sugary cereals. my parents encouraged me, local theater in the dc area. and it channeled it in a productive way, an extraordinary performed at the

post office, - >> they called it that. it was in sequence. the tapes have been burned. >> once a teaser always a teacher. as a retired teacher, my hat is off to you. >> that is right. >> i'm interested in your research process, and sourcing of material. in terms of the research process i assume the journalism side of you trained to work on deadlines but the actor side of you makes you get lost in these characters. how do you balance that? >> there were a lot of youtube poll that went down and there is a story that sticks in my

mind. and rogers and hammerstein, working on the king and i that was overresearching, getting so involved in the history of the court of siam and had to stop him and try to not go too deeply in and oscillate between substantive history and the more personal side. if i were to do this again and had the opportunity, it dozens brawl out of control but that was a challenge. >> my speech will be less then 20 minutes. my guest tonight wasn't able to make a but i was asked to ask you, mo rocca, there is a story in "mobituaries: great lives

worth reliving" about a relative of yours and a trumpet that we should hear about tonight, the feedback brought tears to my eyes. >> as i wrote this book and worked on the podcast, i mentioned the word delightful before that my father used a lot, i found so many things i wanted to write about and talk about were things i inherited from him, more than that, lost my father in 2004. would you like them? a pretty great motivation that works for me. on father's day i sat down and started writing about him and i wrote about that at the age of 50 in 1979 for christmas.

my mother went to a pond shop with her mother visiting from colombia. my father played the trumpet a little bit as a kid but life intervenes, he started a business, got married, had 3 sons and long to play the trumpet again and regretted stopping and in massachusetts, i can remember christmas morning when my father opened up the case and was so excited and every weekday morning my father would play in the cellar, he would play scales, he would tape on the wall xerox sheets telling you how to improve -- how the trumpeters

lips form around the mouthpiece which was really hard. and over your sneakers. and and my mother will not like this. she would line the close, my father would be playing the blues or when the saints go marching in and i go out of town machines. when my father did not think he was going to have a record contact, and loved it so much,

and it was a big impact on me. and after i finish writing that, that should be the final mobituaries in the book and i made that the dedication of the book and my father wasn't a cynical person and had a real sense of the romance of life and he would have loved sunday morning. he would of love that i was on it because he had that same wonderment about what it would be this week and it was a real gift for me. >> - >> she wants that -

>> just in case, weight -- >> wait, wait, don't tell me his npr's news quiz comedy show that has been on for 21 years hosted by my friend peter sehgal who is the fred astaire of public radio. he makes what is hard look easy. it is hard what he does. a panel of guests each week, i am frequently one of them, and the big headlines and small. >> not afraid to look silly. >> not afraid to look silly because it is important. you have to be willing to fall on your face. when we go there you say what is on your mind and don't going with prepared jokes. what makes it work is your

kibitzing with friends. i don't really prepare, you have to write the bluff commissioner and we write them on our own. that show is important for me because it is comfortable with sounding like myself which is this book is also, i'm sure you feel this way, you learn to trust your own instincts and i would hope if i am interested in something and executed well the audience will be interested in and if i'm not interested i will not be able to fool you and similar to that when i started doing it i try to sound like something else and i let go of that and had a better time and got more laughs.

>> the people you write about, appreciate in some way or quality, something - what you learn about -- you learn something about someone, going to drop it and write about it. >> this person might be -- might have a sentimental attachment to this person but i was told they were not that interesting or awful. i highly recommend writing about dead people. they are so easy to deal with.

they don't have publicists or handlers. some of them do. lawyers. i am careful about trashing the ones -- there were a couple but it is not going to be great. >> we are almost out of time. the last question had better be good. >> we were talking about how inspirational these people were through writing obituaries. i couldn't help but wonder about wishbone. would you ever consider doing a tv show similar to wishbone, and to learn about these people as well. >> and what you're going to ask. would you do an obituary for wishbone the dog and we start one for soccer, the name of the

dog playing wishbone and i do want to do one because animal stars, people have a huge attachment to them but mobituaries for kids? i don't know. that may be tricky. i am writing about something -- somebody who just went away for a long time. >> the good news is you can go out and buy this book, tune into a podcast, watch mo rocca on one of his 30 or 40 television programs he works for, hear him on the radio. tonight we have had a tiny smidgen of the wonder of mo rocca. thank you. >> thank you so much. [applause]

>> you are watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. .. >> social beliefs are superseding reality. james arenas, talks about the leadership lessons can be learned from naval commanders throughout history. and the bookings institutions roast riddell, recalls president dwight eisenhower decision to call u.s. marines in 1958. for a full schedule of everything airing this weekend, check your program guide or visit our website, booktv.org. >> the cspan2ew