three months, four months and so we concentrated on interesting. it really was what felt natural to us and what we wanted. >> i love that description of a mix of cockiness and naive. it animates web vernacular these days is some combination of that. david, there's a sense that i think millennials are likes this post-human tech utopia when it comes to news habits and it's weird because there was a pew study that looked at how young people read and it was surprisingly conservative. they were exactly likely to use their smartphones and tablets for news as 40 something and 50 somethings and 50% said they preferred print style reading experiences over these graphics rich, snowfall-esque reading experiences. so should this surprise us?

tell us a little bit about how we like to consume information? >> i think it's really interesting because when you think about millennials, one of the sort of suppositions as you said is that it's this generation that is, you know, unlike any -- just wants to do things on-line and when you think about the tactile experience of leafing through a magazine or print publication there's something about that experience that's about the sense of curiosity and a sense of seriousness that young want to consume their news with. there's been a lot of assumptions to think this generation doesn't want serious content because we're younger, not seeking that. in fact, this is a generation that cares deeply about the world, important issues that wants to be engaged with that. they want their experience to mirror that. while we enjoy going on a site like buzzfeed, there is a sense that we really do care about the world and want to consume that news in that kind of way. if you look at how everybody

wants to consume news, the kindle, for instance, and there's more and more emphasis on trying to emulate a print experience as people read. so when we think about millenniums those trends on how millennials are consuming news are not dissimilar from other generations but they care much more about where that information comes from and, you know, it's more likely their friend wills slayer something in that format than another way. i think that's one of the big differences is it matters much more to us where the information comes from, who gives it to us and that is one of the biggest changes. >> when you say who gives it to us, the publisher, the name between www and dotcom, or talking about the person who is sharing that piece information on facebook or on twitter? so that the sharer becomes somewhat synonymous with a publishing grant. >> the sharer is becoming much more important than the actual source of the information. do i trust this person, feel about this person. this is one of my most trusted

trends and the chances i'm going to read that are greater than the person i met one drunken night in college and i friended accidentally. >> right. although they can be interesting. >> let's talk about that. can we talk more about that? >> right. you know, pivoting to sort of media strategy, you guys have an extremely successful youtube channel. this is interesting because right now in media, as people are beginning to see that display advertising on regular articles doesn't necessarily scale terrific well, it's difficult to have hy-c pns, they're turning to video as a savior. the trouble with video, as i see it, in order to have margin, in order to make profit on video, you want to make cheap, quick video. but cheap, quick video tends to look like cheap, quick video. you say okay, we'll make really expensive, luxurious created video. that's expensive. so you lose money on that. where what have you figured out

about video that people in the audience working with advertisers would love to know? >> just before we answer that, i was thinking like part of the reason our video works is because it's sort of simple and authentic, i feel. and when you talk about things like snowfall, i think it is this very elegant experience but it's sort of the same learning that you keep getting over and over, right? when everyone moved to create websites in '96 and '97, every publisher put all these bells and whistles and craziness. and it was like, oh, yeah, it's this remembrance that a great story sells. and the same with ipad, everyone put these apps and loaded them with craziness. and then you find that people are reading the pdf readers over all these applications that you can lift the ipad and see a million bones in a hand or whatever. >> people just want the words. >> right. or the elegance of stories. i feel like that's part of what we do with video, is that we found someone who relays information in an authentic way. we packaged it in a list of a bundle.

of surprising information and it's told very simply. there's a bit of studio, bit of production quality, but it's just the hooks of good information. and i feel like because people do want to be able to read their -- digest their news in a way if they're standing at a cross-walk they can see a story or if they're sitting and relaxing that they can read a longer piece, you want to give them information any way they can absorb it, are lists on video are, you know, these little hooks where people can break at any point but are engaged enough that they want to watch a nine-minute video. the completion rate on these tremendously long videos in the youtube space is interesting. >> that was one of the biggest surprises i think for us in creating these videos is the question of, will people sit down and watch a ten-minute video because that's the average length of most of our youtube videos. what we found is that people are looking to fill every moment of their day consuming content when they have any free moment.

whether that's 30 seconds at the cross-walk, three minutes in line at starbucks, ten minutes during a break at their computer and we look into to find multiple things we can do to fill each of those gaps. when you mentioned the high quality, you know, there's high quality production and then there's high quality content. that's the part that we really focus on is saying, let's not just crank out content, let's focus on doing a great show every week and looking to add more shows to that but each one of those should be very well researched, well scripted and that doesn't cost a fortune to do that. >> who is the mental floss reader? is it college graduates, young versus old, people passing out at bars? >> i sure hope so. bar exams. you know, it's really not quite -- i mean there are a number of -- especially as we've done more video, there are a number of teenagers and college students. little bit more kind of the young professional, late 20s, early 30s is who we're finding. it's busy professionals that do have those gaps to spend some time to read.

and so, we're killing productivity across america with mental floss. >> fantastic. >> david, this is a tough question. but i hope a good question. the internet, when it was coming about, was ignored for a while by a lot of publishers and now it's the dominant source of revenues for all sorts of publishers, including the new york times. twitter came along and people said it was stupid and now twitter is the home page of fuse for a lot of old school journalists and young school journalists. the facebook news feed was lambasted and now it's potentially the home page for content on the internet. in terms of our reading habits, is there something right now that we think is stupid that five years from now we'll think we were stupid to think it was stupid? >> well, i don't know if this is something that we think is stupid, but i think it's something that's under- realized or sort of viewed as sort of not serious. i think there is a difference between being not serious and being stupid. but it's sort of data

visualization and info graphics. right now we're in the early days of that world of news content and people who have been in traditional news are looking at that stuff is interesting, a novelty, let's play around with that. let's figure out that. but i think we're living in an incredibly, incredibly complicated age. being able to break down issues, being able to break things down in a way that's more easily digestible and bringing those experiences right now that are very, very expensive, very hard to replicate on mobile devices, but i think that as that field grows, it's going to become a bigger and bigger part of mainstream news coverage and how we take issues and how we deliver them to people. there's one thing, if i may, is serious now that i think will be silly later, which is sort of niche media sites. things that are focussed exclusively on one audience. lot of sites that are specifically catering to young people advertised as young people want to come here and read young people news.

i think that -- >> feel free to use names. >> i think that that world -- is going to change. lot of these sites that are targeted for a specific audience more and more are viewing ourselves as wanting to consume the news that everyone is viewing. that will start to change over the next decade. >> what do you guys think? >> i mean, well, into graphics are easy. you can see they have a long shelf life. but i think that there's always a good idea in how people are communicating and always a better way to use a medium, even something like gifts, which seem like jokes of a property of like a cat falling or badger waiving or something can also be instructions on how to tie a tie or like things -- >> how to waive. >> but to be able to see complicated ideas very quickly is something that is valuable.

and i feel like people don't always see the kernel or the elegance of how something can be used. >> yeah. it's interesting how they were used for animating animals doing human-like things. now you see a lot of serious pieces actually sort of trying to explain serious issues but animating the serious issue -- >> with sports. you see it talked about on -- >> absolutely. >> i think -- it's whether or not people embrace a platform, more to me than whether or not they're worth in a way of communicating way of information. >> that's great. thank you, guys very much. thank you. [ applause ]. more from this year's new york ideas festival. with conversations on mars exploration, american culture after 9/11, and the looking for a cure for cancer. from the atlantic magazine, and

the aspen institute, this is 50 minutes. so we're going to talk about mars for the next few minutes. this is adam steltzner who is an engineering fellow in pasadena california. you probably know him as the fellow that invented that crazy contraption that helped to land the curiosity rover on mars. how do you beat that? what have you been doing since the landing? >> yeah. well, great. couple things. no one person ever invents anything. it's always a great team effort and actually that's one of the beauties of engineering is its collaborative art and the ideas for many, many people combined to make these great things that look breakthrough and look crazy but are fantastic come out of the minds of many folks. so what i've been doing lately is working with a new group

of -- a different group of great people, which is fantastic to me because i always love the interaction with new groups of bright talent, and we've been working on developing a system to sample the surface of mars and containerize it very safely for potential return to earth at a later date. so, for our investigations to date on mars, we have packed the science instruments into miniaturized form and taken a lot of effort to get them on to the surface of mars. we think, or certainly the science community believes, that to answer the final questions of mars we'll probably have to do it backwards, which is go and package mars and bring it back to earth to use the science instruments and the various scientists on earth to do the investigation. and i'm helping develop the first piece of that puzzle which

is the sampling system. >> that's great. what are the final questions of mars? >> is it alive? was it ever alive? are we alone? those are some of the questions that we're asking of mars. >> and why do we ask those questions in particular? it seems like, you know, when it comes to space travel, space exploration we could take so many routes and justifications, we could say we want to explore for exploration sake, we want to, you know, get a broader scientific understanding of the universe, why do we focus on life itself? >> well, i think life is very profound question, right? we see life all around us on earth, but when we look out into the stars, we don't see it as obvious certainly and we don't really see it at all and could we really be alone? could all of this, all of our experiences be a unique moment in a unique location in our universe? it's a profound question, it has religious implications.

it is something we've considered since perhaps the dawn of our self-awareness. so we do explore for many reasons. i think we're driven by our own curiosity to explore. so i think exploration is a fundamental expression of our humanity, but the question that we tend to ponder more frequently than any other is, are we alone? >> right. and what if we find out that we're not? >> well, i kind of am already there just on the math of the thing, right? just on the billions and billions to, quote, good old carl seguin. i think for various people -- i mean, it is, i hope we're not alone, it would be -- if we were alone, i would immediately freak out. everybody stop doing everything, right? we might break it. we might be the only thing that the universe has got.

so, it would be good for all of us to have a chance to acknowledge whether there's life in other places in the solar system and to understand that life can evolve in other places and may also help us understand our own evolution and some of the processes that support life here on earth, which are very important to us. >> along those lines, what do you think of the idea of terraforming mars or basically making a home on other planets in our own image in some sense? >> right. that's a great question. you know, folks ask that a lot, space exploration, where is it going? will we go to colonization. lots of times when people talk about colonenization they are worried about what we're doing to this earth. that's the terraforming paradox for me. the skills, the engineering, the care, the discipline necessary

to shape a planet for us are the same skills and engineering and care needed for us to keep this planet good for us. so, i don't think terraforming is a solution to our own lack of discipline or our own lack of care and understanding. now, there are other risks to humans other than ourselves. we are by far the greatest risk. but, you know, if you think very deep, long time horizons, you can imagine threats the sun going out, billions of years from now, black hole wondering into our solar system, there are astronomical threats to the human species. we are concentrated in a single location. so you can imagine in deep time us thinking about diversifying our real estate portfolio, but

for right now, for solving the threats that we pose to ourselves, i think we should not consider that as a solution. >> okay. okay. well, when it comes to the actual work that you're doing with the sampling of mars, i want to get back to that a little bit. how do you sort of -- because you're essentially retraining yourself for a new mission, right? >> right. >> how do you go about that? how do you sort of go about the educational aspects of it as well as the sort of social aspects? >> great. great question. i happen to love doing different things, so this is -- previously i was land -- helping the team developing a landing system and now we're talking about sampling system, very different set of physics involved it's not burning up in the atmosphere, it's drilling holes into rocks and preserving the science that's found within it. i love that. i love learning about new fields, learning about new areas of intellectual endeavor and i

do it sort of by reading, by talking to people, by talking to people smarter than myself and by assembling a team of people who hopefully are smarter than me and we learn together about this new field. i try to make the team environment full of play because my daughter -- i have kids and i notice they learn through play and i think actually you can choose to never stop learning through play. so that's how i try to do it. and it makes it a little more fun for me and i think it makes it fun for the rest of the team. >> that's awesome. how does that manifest. >> not taking things of great gravity too seriously. >> no pun intended? >> and enjoying each other. word play. trying different techniques of looking at a problem, trying to think about all of the opposites. you know, sometimes when i --

when we're in a development and team members want to bring an idea forward or a change to something that we're doing forward, i ask them to come with the three central reasons for the change. >> okay. >> and the three central arguments against the change to sort of help separate yourself from the ideas you're bringing forward so you can be warm and respectful to each other but brutal on the ideas you're playing with. >> yeah. >> by having that objective distance. so a whole bunch of different techniques we use to try to make it fun and fertile for innovation. >> how does that fit in with the overall sort of infrastructure of jpl and nasa? is there a bureaucracy to be dealt with or do you have a lot of freedom? >> there's lots of folks who work at nasa. many, many, 5,000 people who work at the jet propulsion laboratory and doing something like building curiosity and getting safely to the surface of mars required 3,000 of those folks at the laboratory and about 10,000 people spread

over 37 states an the better part of a decade. so you cannot do all of that work in free association word play frolic. there's a time in the beginning where you're developing ideas, you're understanding what you're going to do and that's when that open time exists. that's when you want to use those tools that bring in ideas from all sorts of different directions. and then there's an implementation phase where you have the thing you're doing and you have to make it happen. that becomes much more structured. much more regimented and more hierarchical and involves a fair number of people and dollars. >> a fair number. yeah. what about the public facing side? i mean, i think to me one of the things that was so striking about the curiosity landing was just how much of a spectacle it was in the best sense and reminded you how much all this advanced technology is so fundamentally human and this was one of the first times that we've had such sort of intimate

access to you guys as engineers and to sort of that technology? how do you kind of think about the social side or do you not at all? >> no, i do. you know, what's interesting, i worked on -- we put a pair of rovers -- twin rovers on the surface of mars in 2004. and i worked a lot on that landing system. and in 2004, social media existed a little bit but not really. and we were the -- on the top news stories for cnn until frankly brittney spears got out of a limousine wearing or not wearing something and all of a sudden we fell off the list. in the era of nightly news, they tell you five things. if you're thing number six that happened that day, you didn't happen. now, this era is very different. social media, many different

multiple parallel paths of information transmission mean that people can become interested and spread the word themselves. and i've noticed huge difference with respect to curiosity, her landing, her landing system was even wackier looking maybe and she is big by the way. the version downstairs just in case everybody knows is half scale. the real curiosity, might be third scale. i can't quite tell. the real curiosity's head sits slightly above the george washington bus that sits down in the lobby. you can go and look up at george washington and get a sense of the real size of her. so she was huge. she was a little bit outlandish in the way we -- in the way we landed her. >> just a little bit, yeah. >> but more importantly i think there was a whole bunch of conduits, parallel conduits for information and contact with the engineers through social media and i think that's made a huge difference. >> that's great.

is that something you think of on an on going basis? how do we portray this work that's not in full existence yet but how do we get the public excited about it? >> so i don't. my strategy, which i hope is a good one, it's slightly dangerous, is to just be honest. and available. because i think that connecting with the public, who frankly are paying for these efforts and giving them insight as to why we do it and what drives us and who we are who do these things is important and useful. >> right. >> i think the idea that we engage the youth of this nation, which we do, i can tell you that i'm engaged all the time by young kids, young adults across the country who are motivated and turned on frankly by

curiosity and exploration. i think it's one of the greatest services that we provide to the nation. and so, i believe in it. so i welcome opportunities to share. >> yeah. do you think that's common throughout jpl, at least? >> in general, i think there's a lot of folks who understand the value of it. i can tell you it's quite frightening to share yourself openly with people. >> yeah. >> and so to the degree you can be less guarded varies from person to person. and i may be on the oversharing side of that spectrum. >> would you ever want to go to space yourself? >> so the more i look at space and the more i am involved in building robots that virtually explore space for all of us, the more i think of how delightfully warm and loving this planet is. i've got a very nice garden in

the backyard of my house. i have two lovely daughters. and i'm very happy to stay right here. >> that's wonderful. and i want to circle back you call curiosity she. can you just explain why you do that? >> yeah. that's a good question. um, i'm not the only one. we tend to do that at the lab and it may be that sort of the tradition of ocean-going vessels, naval vessels or it may be that we think of her in sort of a protective way -- >> interesting. >> i certainly do. by the way, curiosity is the better name for a girl than the boy, don't you think? i do. so, yeah, some collection of that we just organically, unintentionally without organization call her a she. >> interesting. very interesting. i think the social media team was run by women as far as i know? >> yes, it is actually all women.

that's true. >> this is going to have to be our last question. what's next for space exploration? after mars 2020. >> great. right. there are other places to explore other than mars. there's the outer planets of jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune, et cetera, those places are quite interesting. they're harder to get to. they take a longer time to get there and they have some interesting moons about jupiter and saturn. europa, titan, these are places that astrobiologists think might have the conditions that would allow life to exist today. maybe great examples for us -- great places for us to go search for signs of a living universe. and so i'm hopeful that we will be doing some work not only at mars, i love mars, been doing a lot of work on mars, but also beyond mars to the icy moons of the outer planets. >> wonderful. thank you. actually i think we have one

more question. yep. from mr. steve clemens here. >> hi, folks. i'm steve clemens. i'm editor at large of the atlantic and i've been obsessed with having you here. i am so excited. this is not a commercial for seemens but i'm thrilled we were so obsessed. when they brought curiosity here and said they will do it, i've been obsessing -- what's the pipeline like of younger adam steltzners out there? is the country getting it right in doing that? i know semens donated a few billion of dollars of this software you used to simulate the landings. and i know they've gone to places like cleveland, ohio, and they're going to richmond to try to give young people an opportunity to play around with this fancy software that you used. it made me think about is the pipeline of young talent like you there and what should we do to enhance it if it's not what it should be and then we'll wrap it up and then i get to interview the next guy on the next stage. so megan, thank you. >> you're welcome.

>> great. great question. i think for me, the key to making more people like me -- actually i do that -- not cloning but my wife and i have a whole program based on that. but i'm sure my wife tricia is loving that right now. oversharing, right? i think the most important thing that we can give our young people is a thirst, a drive to search for that which is awesome, that which brings awe and wonderment to them. whether they find that in the visual arts, in music, in politics, in literature, or in the sciences and engineering, i'm not very concerned because our nation, filled with inspired young people who are driven to

see what they can do will be a great nation and will make the world a better place. so, to the extent that our efforts, exploring mars, putting a rover named curiosity as our curiosity helped touch that in youth, it makes me very happy and very humbled to be part of it. so i look forward to any effort that we put forward to create awe and inspire our nation's youth. >> awesome. thanks so much. [ applause ]. please welcome to the stage, steve clemens and anand giridharadas. >> nice to see all of you again. >> how are you doing? >> great. >> i think we should bring this conversation back down to earth.

>> thank you so much for joining us today. i don't know if all of you have noticed, but in the lobby, not only do we have curiosity down there, but we have copies of aed. that's book "the true american murder and mercy in texas." it is a deep book. i know i had mentioned to you before for me it was kind of a life of pi meets truman capote's in cold blood. can you give us a quick overview of what the true american hits and what it's about? >> so all of you remember 9/11 and the feverish days after 9/11 when we were all kind of in a frenzy and that loop of the planes hitting the towers was over and over again on the tv and you will also remember that in the weeks after that, a few unsophisticated, perhaps deranged, angry people went

around arab hunting, as some of them called it. and this book is about one of those self-styled true american as he called himself arab slayers. and he went to three different gas stations in dallas, texas, shot the clerk behind each of these three counters in the month after 9/11. two of them died. and the third one was spared by a bird-hunting gun that blinded him in one eye but spared his life. and this book begins with that and -- >> his name is rais bhuiyan. >> and mark stroman is the attacker. and the reason it's a book is ten years later inspired by his own ability to rebuild america and realizing the man who shot him actually came from this very different america that had failed him in a lot of ways,

rice re-enters the man's life by publicly forgiving him and then fighting a legal campaign against the state of texas, the governor of texas, rick perry who was announcing for president that month and fights to save his attacker from the death penalty and get him commuted to a life sentence. >> you know, there is -- it's a fascinating story -- >> and a true story, i should say. >> a true story. and when i was reading it and thinking about rais' real obsession with saving him. i mean, it's not that he just tried casually to save him. that would have been an interesting story. he was in tears constantly trying to explain saying that he couldn't feel whole as a person unless he overcame this by both having an encounter with stroman so that he could understand when stroman was there taking lives and about to take his own life what was in his mind and whatnot and being able to forgive him and move on and have that encounter. and they did have -- there's a

time here where he had had a conversation he said, rais kept replaying one moment of a phone call he had with stroman in his mind. once he said that word, i love you, bro, i could feel already my tears were coming out of my eyes. the same person ten years back he wanted to kill me for no reason for my skin color, because of my islamic faith and now after ten years this same person is telling me he loves me and calling me his brother. it's a profound story. when i was thinking about it, you write the letter from american column for "the new york times." i asked myself, is this a beautiful boutique story that has no echo effects? what are we supposed to gain and what are the echo effects you're hoping to get from this story? >> in a way, it was the opposite. i was not particularly interested in texas. i wasn't interested in the death penalty. i wasn't interested especially in these crimes which were actually ten years before my

getting involved in this story. i was really -- i had been in india for several years as a foreign correspondent. i had gone back to the country my parents had come here from. was in india in a time of optimism and came back to america and found in a way the reverse process happening here, this loss of faith in the american dream. that was the thought swirling around. and i found in this story, two men who embody an america that actually still works better than it has ever worked and better than any other place in the world has ever worked. for all the declinist talk, a lot of it is hogwash. you know, most of the people in this room, whatever they're doing, whatever institutions they're part of are probably functioning better than they have ever functioned and that any other country has produced. but a lot of us don't live in this america. in a shooting, in a weird way, it was the victim of the shooting who came to see himself, despite being an

immigrant, despite being shot, despite being half blind as part of a fortunate america that still works and still works for people like him and still allowed him to rebuild a life, get a job at the olive garden, learn i.t. and make six figures. in an i.t. management job. it was the man who shot him that came to see him that belonged to america that stopped working a long time ago. in this particular case, a white-working class, ex-urban, texan existence, where we may use the word family but nobody would recognize it as a family, every dad is gone, a lot of moms are in prison or addicted, everybody is raised by grandparents or great grandparents, jobs are scarce. and there's just no fabric left. and once rais got to know about the world that had produced that man, his argument actually became that this man's life should be saved, should not be executed because he didn't have the same shot despite being born here at the american dream that i did as an outsider.

>> so tell us a little bit about mark stroman. i hope i'm not stealing his story. he was executed. one of the other profound moments somewhere in here is something along the lines that stroman loved all the love that he was getting from rais and everyone and the attention, the effort. but at the same time, he was ready to be done with it and that he secretly hoped rais would fail, that he had come to terms with what he had done and wanted to die. but what was his -- i mean, i sort of sense that happened he involved in this but what was his evolution? >> this is a guy who at one level the book begins with the shooting and almost anything you learn about him at the beginning or maybe even ever makes you say, this guy is just bone rotten, nothing redeemable in him. but the more you learn, you learn something from his trial where in a capital murder trial lot of trial is about the kind

of person's character rather than simply what they did. and then through what he writes when he's in prison, you also learn that -- you kind of learn two different ideas. one is that he's bone rotten. the other is that he had no shot of being anything other than what he was. you have to hold both those ideas. you cannot say he had no shot therefore no big deal, you killed a few people. but we have to recognize that in his social world, almost every young man that he knew whose name i could track down from his childhood also went to jail for

short of the money required to abort him and she wishes she had it. and yet that never excuses killing people, but for me, it raised profound questions about how do we as a society draw the line between personal responsibility and collective responsibility for people like that. >> you know, it occurred to me that just recently i had written a piece in "the atlanta" on the reaction or the situation where three young guys allegedly killed a young australian jogger in oklahoma and they were out there saying they were bored so they decided to kill someone. and that was also going through my mind as i was reading this and saying, what insights have you gained in terms of deconstructing what was going on in the heads of these various people about the larger social dynamics of what i think you call the undernation, this hurting undernation? beyond this story here, what

should we all be doing to be worried about those kids who are bored so they decided allegedly again to go kill someone? >> in the last third of the book, since you mentioned the execution happened, it did happen. the last third of the book is all after the execution. and it was very important to me to not have this only hang on stroman because he is clearly an extreme figure, so i spend time with his children, his children are much more normal. they've not done capital murder. but two of the three have been -- had felony convictions. they've struggled with meth and alcohol. and they live in a world in which everybody seems to have those problems also. and i think what i learned -- you see today's headline or yesterday's on staten island's heroin problem and that it's now the bottom of the island not the top that was connected to manhattan. you see this thing in vermont where the governor devoted the full state to addiction and those places. this is a sort of different problem, i think, than our inner

city crack problems that we've talked about, for example. this is something where i think boredom is actually a part of it and there's been stories about kentucky. we all know these stories and they kind of come up individually. but there's something going on about a combination of a lack of work, a real collapse of men, a real collapse of men. i mean, a lot of men -- millions of men who require the bodies of men but don't ever leave being boys, who spend their lives rotating in and out of prison, this is such a massive thing going on. it's starting to affect the marriage market. i spend time with, you know, these daughters of mark stroman. and i said, what do you think of this whole -- are people getting married in your community? what do you think of this idea that marriage is going down? she said, you know, at some abstract level i believe in marriage, but if you look at the men in my words, not hers, but the men i have access to,

they are all much more unstable. i'm pretty unstable. they're much more unstable than me. >> are you okay? >> i'm glad you were so moved by this story. that happens at all the events actually. [ inaudible ]. >> i hope you're okay. can we make sure -- can we get someone over here, please? is anyone on my team here? logan? okay. in any case, go ahead. >> and you have an entire world that feels like it's just imploding. and part of what's interesting is when these inner city problems were the big story, they were three miles away from the biggest media center in the world. this is very different. if things -- if kentucky is just imploding, it takes a long time before word arrives here. we're just not in it.

we're not seeing it everyday the way we saw the bronx everyday. and there's also a lot more people who live in the kinds of places i'm talking about than live in the american inner city. and i think it's -- if anything, kind of grows out of this in terms of documenting something that i hope other people who know how to solve problems as i do not deals with. it's this particularly among white working class kind of just complete fabric fraying. >> this may be a completely unfair question, but what struck me again thinking about this slice of time that you've looked at from 9/11 where there was so much palpable national anger that opened up for people a real rage, and in that, lots of things filled that basket. you know, disappointment and anger about their own personal conditions, you know, you saw this in terms of various other impacts i've seen in joblessness and the anger at the outsider, the other that came on. i think a lot of this is out there. i'm wondering, if you were to

sort of grade this, truman capote's book came to mind. there's other cases of just horrific moments where we've seen this sort of bigotry explode. is the country getting better or is it getting worse? do you have a sense of things that have come in to sort of be useful correctives? there's another way to read this book and say, this story is a naive story that rais was a naive guy that he wasted a lot of time trying to help someone who is an awful cretin escape justice for some vein moment he had and that's not a healthy thing. that's a dark side of reading it but you could read that. >> i think that would have been the correct interpretation if rais' conclusion was mark stroman was a fluke. i think it's completely wrong to think mark stroman was a fluke. he was an extreme expression -- most people don't do this even if they are as angry as he did,

but he grew out of something. he grew out of something that is not working. and in the world he came from, a lot of people's lives are not working. and i think we need to kind of deal with -- you know, if we were having this conversation in the french -- in the paris ideas event at the french historical society, i think the issue would be more a kind of generalized decline of the country, or in most western countries. america is actually very different from all these other western declining countries, in my view. because the capacity at the top, again, lot of people in this room and what you do and the institutions you belong to are actually still world beating and that's not true of even most other western countries. most of the best things that are done at the world in any field are still done in america, for all the talk of china and india and this and that, right? where is that mars thing happening? that mars thing is not happening in a lot of other places. so we have the capacity. the issue is can we connect the

capacity that those of us that are a part of and the institutions of those that us are a part of to the 72% of the americans who are absolutely not a part of that america. >> we're right at the end. is rais comfortable, happy, comfortable with the book? what's his story just today really quickly? >> he is doing great. he is comfortable with it. i was nervous. he was nervous. he read it a few weeks ago right before publication and sent me a note saying he was crying and was stunned that it seemed like i was in the room for some of these things where i was not. in his childhood and his past. it's an amazing gift, i have to say, for both the stromans and rais to allow someone like me to kind of come into your world and not knowing what i'm going to do or say and let your story be told because without that we wouldn't know very much about our condition. >> ladies and gentlemen, check

out his book, the true american murder and mercy in texas. are you going to be downstairs signing some copies? >> i will. i will sign copies of this book. if you prefer other books, i'll sign copies of those books, too. >> sounds great. before lunch, i'll give you a quick rundown of some of my world. i'm a cancer biologist, i'm a genetic scientist. i'm going to run through a few things about cancer, about drug developments, about some of the work that i've been doing that i think you'll find pretty interesting. i'm with a group auto desk, it's normally known for design with a brand new group in that company focussed on bio and nano design. cancer is a relatively straight-forward disease, even though we really accumulated a large body of information on it. strip it all down. it's really cells that have had their dna corrupted. and that corruption allows it to start to grow without the proper

restraints. and if it keeps growing and starts to spread through the body, it can crash the network, essentially. the problem is -- when you think about it, really, cancer is an infection, not with a microbe or a virus, but with one of your own cells that has gone rogue. and it is a life-threatening disease, like any infection when it happens. 100 years ago we didn't worry quite so much about cancer because it was actually bacterial infections that tended to kill us. small cuts, accidents, et cetera, if we had a bacterial infection that started to colonize, continued to grow, we had nothing really to fight it with. then this molecule is discovered in 1929, penicillin. penicillin was a game changer in the world of medicine. it still took a while to get it up to production at commercial -- in commercial volumes, but once penicillin and its chemical cousins became available, suddenly we didn't

die from microbial infections anywhere near as much. today, it's actually quite rare, unless you have a very resistant bacteria. today we don't even get a day off of work. but this was a major life-threatening disease. cancer is treated in a completely different way. we carpet bomb any cell that's growing fast. the look of a cancer patient, the hair falling out, the iv pole, that's actually the treatment. it's not necessarily the cancer. so, we completely obliterate cells in a nondiscriminate way that are growing quickly. more modern medicines are targetive. medicines like herceptin and gleevec really key in on path ways in the cell. they're very focussed. they tend to be used alongside chemotherapy.

but when they work, when those targets exist in the cancer, it's as phenomenally different in treatment outcomes as penicillin and bacteria. phenomenal response unfortunately, it's -- we don't have a lot of these magic bullets so to speak. we all want more of them. but we're not going to get them. and here's why. this is a 60-year trend in the outputs of drug development draft out as billions of dollars invested in r and d per new drug. this is an exponential graph but not the once ones we like to see in digital technology this is a

negative exponential. over the last 60 years, we're getting dramatically less drugs per dollar than invested. this isn't one company, this 12k3w4r50i6r7b8g9sd 12k3w4r50i6r7b8g9sd 12k3w4r50i6r7b8g9sds. >> the business model isn't hard to understand. they bring them in-house, they

polish them, they get them through sensors, the fda and the case of drug development. and then they're marketing and advertising team start to deliver it to the public. it's really long, it's really risky, it's really expensive, which is why, like hollywood, drug companies choose to seek block busters. when you think about a targeted medicines, they're like those little indy arts films. not a big audience. the problem is it costs about the same amount of money to make a little indy art film. if you're making a targeted drug for a cancer, the result is it ends up being phenomenally expensive. and the more expensive it is, the harder it is to get insurance companies to pay for it. so the best medicines ended up

hurting people. how can we make a drug company that truly made faster, better, cheaper medicines and start to generate lots of cancer drugs. my philosophy is simple. if you want to beat cancer, make better drugs. >> so i'm kind of a ying-yang kind of guy. if i see everybody going this way, i go the other way. and i ended up creating e ining experimental drug company different from anybody else. it was completely open soursz. no money involved. i don't -- i don't need any pun. i don't want any money. that's not the case. for me. but i really want ed to focus o one person at a time rather than a mass market. for me, that's important.

one, no two cancers are the same. no two people have the same cancer. it's not an infectious disease. if you make a drug for one person, all the really expensive and time-consuming parts of drug making, getting it through phase clinical trials, it's i reca e' risk and benefit. not a societal threat. it's simply a drug for one person and one cancer. and that's actually a much ea easier problem to solve. i also had a big technology in my back pocket called genetic engineering. and genetic engineering is getting really cheap. so my goal was can i make the most advanced medicines in the

world using genetic engineering for the lowest price possible. ideally, free. remember, in 1995, giving away a free e-mail account seemed strange and yet, we all take it for grantedment so the challenge for me is i had this tool, genetic engineering. cancer what drug could i possibly make that was cheap enough to do for one person at a time? and then a friend of mine dropped a paper on my desk. on encle littic viruss. it turns out there's been about 30 years of r&d in these viruss. there's a whole library in them. the basic idea is this. it's a really, really weak virus. it's really weak.

it's quite a common one, usually. and if it infects a normal cell, the normal cell just shuts it down. it's so weak that a normal cell has the viral defenses and just says eh, go away. breaks it apart. never starts to replicate. but cancer cells are broken cells. they're corrupted. and it turns out some of those corruptions leave them vulnerable to weak virus attack. and the virus starts to grow in the cancer cell, breaks the cancer cell and releases more virus which can go onto infect more cancer cells. it's actually hijacking the cancer cells and turning them into little drug fact ris. the problem with this is your immune system recognizes all vie russs as foreign and tends to shut them double.

some of these companies are getting a lot of success. at the end ot day, it's really gentle. but i wanted to find a way to make these viruss faster, better and cheaper. i was inspired by a 2003 paper by the genetic scientist, craig ventor and his research parter in and nobel prize winner by the name of ham smith. in december, 2003, they've shown that they can computer-design a virus. in this case, called fi-x 174. they could print out the dna of that virus and they could boot up that virus to make virus particles.

this is essentially the whole protocol. it reduces down to the design of genome, the build of that genome and the test of that genome. but this is the part that i want you to see. it took two weeks to do this work in 2003. of course, that's with some brilliant genetic scientists. i work with this design company, auto-desk. we've been working on a project called project cyborg. it's for all forms of bio-nano design. we took that fi-x bacteriaphage, we modelled it. now you can see it and play with it. we're really good at 3-d printing. we actually printed out some of these molecules.

it's so cool when you print them out. we even made lollipops out of them so we could hand them out and give them to people and say here, suck on a virus. >> we used the same tools that we do for 3-d printing. we sent it to this company, one of the best dna syntheszin synt companies around. and we said could you make this genome that it took a bill i can't scientist years ago to do? and it turns out they could. i was able to boot up, with some colleagues, the synthetic viruss. this is a growth plate. where ever you see a spot there, a sin thetynthetic virus has bo and started killing the e. coli cells around it. viruss are really little buy logical software. and i didn't have to go into the lab to do this.

it was all digital. so here's what i see happening in the future of cancer. we already have this digital diagnostics and the ability to get cells out of of a patient. that's very straight forward. today, we can sequence a cancer genome in less than a day. that's so much information. but it can feed into an auto-design program. auto-drug. from that design program, it can go to a printer to print that viral genome. and we can get that in two weeks now, for a thousand dollars in print costs. and that allows us to make a virus that we could actually test on one person's cells. if it kills the cancer cell and doesn't hurt normal cells, it passes. and that could actually be used as a treatment. now, we're testing this in cell culture now. we'd love to do veterinarian studies. but we think this type of

approach could get into humans very quickly. we can open source the entire design process. it's just software. and the amazing part is the cost of writing sin thetic dna, like the cost of writing genome frequency is falling so rapidly, it's actually remarkable. i'm sorry, it's not going back. but the cost is going so low, it costs a thousand dollars to make that virus. next year, it will cost about $10. year after that, maybe a dollar. it allows us to explore new business models in drug development, instead of just making one drug for a billion dollars and taking 10 or 15 years, why not a netflix model for an individual where you can have all the cancer drugs you want made specifically for you for one low price. change the fda requirements about approving is single drug.

instead, approve a drug development process. and if these tools keep opening up, there's nothing to stop people from making their own drugs. so i want to see every drug maker come from the maker community. i want to see it done fast and cheap. and i think if we do that, we'll actually beat cancer. we've been fighting it for so long, we actually forget we just might win. thank you. [ applause ]

[ applause ] >> we now have a real, real line-up today. we've got bill bratton and james bennett. gabby giffords and james kelly.

i do want to give a quick shout out to c-span. c-span has been with us on both stages all day. we want to thank them for their support. and for those of you who are watching out in the lobby, these next sessions will be great. the man who's keeping us safe in town, bill bratton and our commander in chief, james bennett. >> thanks. thank you. thank you, commissioner, for being with us here today. i thought i'd open with a familiar off-repeated statistic that i thought i should repeat again. you will correct me if i have it wrong. but, in 1990, there were 2,245 homicides in the city of new york, which i think was the record mark. last year, there were 333

homicides in the city of new york. though the population has grown by how many in the meantime and there are how many more visitors to the city each year? i can remember what the implications were for citizens across the city in the early '90s. the transformation is nothing short of astonishing. you arrived in new york to lead the transit police in 1990. while there are no doubt many factors which explained the decrease, the source of strategy and tactics you put in place from aggressively implementing the broken windows philosophy to pursuing data-driven methods of policing are widely credited. so you're the guy to ask, i think, about what's next. i heard you talk a lot in the last couple years about predictive policing. what does that mean?

>> predictive policing is the evolution we're now going through in policing. the period of time that we're in right now is called the information intelligence era. we're recording as much information as we can and making intelligence out of it. in policing, it was the comstat system that we put in place in 1994. it allows us to last year, the all-time low. good news is, so far, this year, we had 18 fewer murders than we had same time last year. so the good news is crime can continue to go down. the bad news is finding time to do it. and predictive policing, i think, 1 going to be one of those tools. the ability, with the huge ray mounts of information that we

can gather that are being continually improved upon. we hit at the ability within a geographic area to predict within some certainty, within some crime frame, that a crime will likely be committed there unless we prevent it. and we prevent it by putting a police officer there. cops on the dots. same thing we did in the 1990s. >> it does sound a little bit like minority report. you're not identifying the criminals in advance. you're identifying the likelihood of a cry being committed. can you give a concrete example? >> actually, 234 some respects, you are identifying the criminal. the al go rilt m takes into acount who's living in the area. who's been arrested. who just got out of jail. they're matching up against who does that type of crime. so the minority report, you referred to as the tom cruise movie, the late 1990s that looks so futuristic. now you can do exactly what tom cruise was doing.

it seems so futuristic as recently as 10 years ago. this is not farfetched. this is the reality of policing. and if we go for it into the 21st century, it's going to become much more common place. the idea of using technology, using big data, use iing all ofe new ways of collaborating with each other to effectively keep crime low. and, most importantly, prevent it from occurring in the first place. >> so what -- in the future, can we, as citizens, expect our public spaces to feel like. i mean, they're now six or seven thousand cameras in the streets of new york. can you imagine more tightly surveil of public space sns. >> certainly, we can expect 7.5 million people in 1990. we believe now, 8.5 million.

and with the 56 tourists, that number is dwroing and growing. from the police perspective, one of the things that we'll atempbattempt to do is try to continue our ability to police those public spaces. post 9/11, implemented the program and then growing up to around 59th street and manhattan and moving on. that's the camera systems. currently 7,000 cameras, police cameras, that are all interconnected. so that we have the ability to very closely monitor, particularly in manhattan, public space. we also have license plates, capableties that, in the future, it will be impossible to come into the city of new york and not have your license plate scanned in some fashion at easy pass or some other type of

location where that number is being recorded. all of this has been deemed by the supreme court to be legal. it will keep you increasingly safe. in an exchange of fwifing up some degree of privacy, we will, one, be able to prevent crime, which is more important in solving the fact. there's not one of you that wants to be the victim of a crime. >> uf pulled back from one of your predecessor's keeping files

on people listening in on conversations and restaurants and so forth. do you think that we, either in the city and/or nationally, i guess, did lose our balance a little bit in the struggle against terrorist threats in recent years? >> no, not really. the unit was down to i think about three offices. it had been disbapded prior to my arrival. you would think that armageddon had arrived on january 21st. we had over a thousand plifs in the city of new york who spend all of their time on counter terrorism activity. we move the last three offices

that had basically, over the last several years, ceased to occur. it was not going to diminish in any significant way. and there was also, i point out, its function was not just to effectively try to learn more about the muslim community. it was any community that the department did got have a sense of that we are an incredibly mixed society in new york city. 200 some odd different population groups here. from a policing standpoint, the more you know about those various communities, the better off we'll be able to police them. the better off we'll be able to develop collaborations with them sochlt that if there is an issue happening, we need to be aware of it, it may genere concerns here. we do need to be aware of those communities. but i don't think we need this particular unit to do it.

>> certainly we have community service offices. their role is to infinitely understand what communities exist. that their role is to go out proactively, understand issues in those communities, ways that we, the police, can understand them, interact better with them and protect them better. i've got hundreds that are doing a lot of the same work in a much more collaborative manner. >> if i could ask you the balance question from the other direction, i wonder, do you worry, do you think that the public, we are as 9/11 receives

a bit, are becoming less concerned than we should be about terrorists threats? i don't want to presume that anything keeps you up at night, but is that what keecps you up t night? >> in concerns about terrorism, i don't think anything diminishes. >> it's constantly in our memory. throughout the rest of america, there's been a significant drop off. i've really had to fight in los angeles for seven years, i was there 2000-2009, to get resources built up.

so america's second largest city, it faded quickly. it certainly hasn't faded in this city. we'll be in this for the rest of our existence. let me ask jowl about another controversial practice. you've made clear it's an essential part of the tool kit. that you can't really police without it. but you're reforming it here. so what is the reform version of stop and frisk look like? >> what we are doing is modifying it.

there was a supreme court decision that outlined the parameters within which police would have to operate that you'd have to police constitutionally, respectfully, consistently. the reason is that a police officer has to have reasonable cause. it's something that he or she cannot articulate as to a belief that a person or person has, is or is about to commit a crime. and they have to be there to articulate why they feel that. that then entitles them to stop a person. it sbietles them to question a person. and, if the officer fears for his or her safety, or fears that the person might be a risk to

the public, the officer can frisk that person. it's a basic tool of american policing. it's something that we felt the practice had grown too much. crime was going down dramatically. the mayor's belief was my belief, as a police professional. that blif was certainly different than the former mayor and commissioner kelly, although, over the period, 2012, 2013, the numbers have declined dramatically. from a peak of about 600 thousand down to 700 thousand.

so far, this year, we do anywhere from 6-7,000 stops a day. crime continues to go down. similar to you going to a doctor for cancer. i'd like to say that the patient was getting better. crime was down dramatically. but, particularly in minority communities, more and more medicine was being applied. and the patient was not feeling

better about whether the doctor thought was an improved condition. so in any event, the issue has now been diffused. we're still practicing it and we'll continue to practice it. at the same time, crime is continuing just going down. >> are the actual tactics changing the actual exchange between the police officer and the person on the street? . if that's the case, how do you avoid the same kind of friction. >> first off, you're not targeting. you're witnessing as a police officer. and the un[ foreign language ] chew gnat reality is a number of

precincts around the city is that there is more criminal-type activity. it's ear refutable. you want to do it to the best of your ability respectively and do it consistently that i don't stop you and treat you differently as a whit person than if i was dealing with a black person up in harlem. in all instances, you have to be able to articulate what the reasonable suspicion was. we're constantly trying to improve our training. that's an area that putting on that will also hep to reduce

some of the tension over the last several years. all right, our shot clock is winding down. i'd love to hear your thoughts on what meaningful gun control might look like. in a country where there are 350 million guns said to be in circulation. that seems as big or bigger in obstacle than the second amendment to gun control. i wonder what you think? >> well, first off, i think the term gun control. it's over. we lost control. 350 million guns that drive us crazy. what we're dealing with, really, is gun reform trying to find new ways to deal with the issue of

gun violence. one of the ways we certainly can do that is through policing those who would use guns, that are very aggressive in finding them, arresting them, and working with the courts with that use of the firearm, results in the injury. put them away. that the idea police exist to control behavior, to do it lawfully. to do it respectfully. and to do it with crime, particularly gun crime, the idea is the better focused we are on those committing the violence which is still a relatively small number in our society. the better we're able to identify them and get at them and the better for all of us. the good news is we're getting better at that all of the time, as reflected in this city. at least to the insanity that is just america. in this city, we're still leading the city. >> thank you very much.

[ applause ] >> thanks again to the commissioner. and for my boss, james bennett. pretty good job. i think that the way james bennett and bill bratton just left is the perfect pivot point into an important discussion. for nearly 15 years, gabb gabbgabby giff gabby giffords was the youngest in the united states senate. she was consistently ranked at one of the nation's most centered sfwres of congress.

after the congressman was wounded, she became known around the world. we're grateful today about their lives before and after their shooting. and hear views on responsible gun ownership in the 21st serge ri. i have one other thing to had. add. the thing that enlightened, and mark has just deflated me. how many of you went to bono concerts? remember when he was speaking to

gabby up in space? and we all thought that was life? it was a magical moment. and that's before we started. are you a morning person or a night owl? >> i'm a night owl. >> cat person or dog person? >> houston or tucson. >> tucson is my home.

>> houston is okay. >> oh, okay. >> you don't want to put anybody down -- >> especially texas. >> especially texas, exactly. >> coffee or tea? >> sugar -- tea. tea. >> two sugars. >> that's a lot of sugar. >> so, from the very beginning, you and gabby have made the stages of her rekcovery public. why did you do it that way. >> it's interesting, when gabby first got to the rehab hospital, about two weeks after she was injured, a friend of mine said hey, i want to help.

what can i do? he said are you going to record all the of this? i said i never really thought about it. go grab a camera. gabby had to give permission for anything that was put out there about her. and as we travel around the country, and we still find this, that her recovery and want she went through has been very inspirational for a lot of other people that have had their own medical issues.

so it seemed like the right thing to do. >> didn't you visit the boston bomber people? >> yes, we were in boston a couple days ago, but this was just about a year ago. we visited with a lot of these folks that are now multiple amputees. abds just saw what they were going through. >> as a rule you been involved

in the therapy at all? >> not really! what have you been doing? >> all kinds of stuff. t. gabby, do you feel like you're going back to the old gabby or creating a new gabby in this process. >> better. stronger. tougher. good stuff. >> so new stuff? >> the new gabby gifford. and how do you maintain a positive outlook? how do you do that? >> i want to make the world a better place.

>> when gabby was in a coma, and you don't know what doctors know about the brain activity when somebody is in a coma. one of the first things question saw that we knew that gabby giffords was still in there somewhere, she was unconscious, but, you know, at some level, she was still thinking and able to pay attention. she, with her eyes clothes, and still out of it, pulled often my ring. >> on your finger? >> yes. pulled it off and started flipping it through the if i fi of her left hand. so she wasn't actually fully in a coma. that's when we figured out that gabby was still in there. >> yeah, sitting at dinner or a restaurant, she'd often pull it off and do the same thing. >> and you don't remember? >> not really. >> no. gabby, is it true that in the early phases of your recovery, you just said the word chicken? >> chicken, chicken, chicken.

chicken, chicken, chicken. >> that was it. for a long period of time. >> a long time. chicken, chicken, chicken. >> has anyone explained why? >> yes. and we knew that before she started saying anything. because the speech therapist said with a left side traumatic brain injury that affects your speech, people do what's called proseth rate on a single word and she picked the word -- >> chicken. >> chicken. which is much better than many other ongss. it could have been a lot worse.

gabby, what can you do now that you did got do two years ago. >> drive a car. >> which is pretty awesome. o a the third time around the track, she was going 110. >> what's the toughest time? >> ephasia. i don't like it at all. >> that's the speech issue that

she has from her brain injury. but for gabby, the more difficult part is the transition part. . >> so is it true that you asked to relearn spanish? >> si. por favor. >> wow. that's amazing. >> once a week, right in. >> once a week. so once a week, gabby has a spanish ininstructor that comes over. i try to not be there because she knows i took five years of spanish in high school and this woman completely abuses me at the kitchen table. but it's great for gabby because she used to give speeches in spanish. interviews in spanish.

rad rad radioads for campaigns. >> and now you have a dog sfwh. >> yes. nelson, the dog, 1 a lab -- golden retriever mix. and he was raised in a prison in massachusetts. bla >> a woman's prison. >> and we actually skyped with the woman who gave us the dog. she was a murderer. but she raised a great dog. is he a good helper dog? >> helper dog. good stuff. >> yeah, he does a lot of things. >> now, you two have gone from not living in the same city to being together a lot. what has that been like that transition.

>> it's been really great. you know, when really bad things happen to people, sometimes it could be really hard to find positive things. before, we had one of those commuter marriages which included tucson and houston and washington, d.c. and now we get to live in the same place. so that's a positive thing that came out of that day. >> and being closer, right? >> closer. >> gabby, can you tell us what you're working on now? >> americans responsible solutions. >> so that's our political action committee, which is a c-4 and a superpact trying to get our elected leaders to do something about these pretty horrible rates we have in this

country. we have 15-20 times death rate from gun violence than any other industrialized nation. we can do a lot better than that. we do not need to be there. so we've got to convince, you know, our elected officials to take this on as a serious issue and to pass reasonable gun laws that most americans agree with. >> i've also seen videos of you shooting guns, including the same gun that gabby was shot with or she owns. what can you tell us about your relationship with guns before and after the accident? >> i don't think it's changed much. i've always owned a gun as an adult. i got my first gun when i finished high school. my dad bought me a gun.

both my parents were police officers. we would shoot our guns at daddy's house. >> how was it to shoot a gun? now that guns have a different meaning for you. >> not really. >> i don't think so. >> one of the interesting things, and her neurosurgeon told me early on, the positive thing about her injury is she won't suffer from post-traumatic stress. because she was shot first. shot first and shot in the head. if i was to drive to target and park my car and come out 30

minutes later, i might not remember where my car is. a year later, when we went to the safe way, a year to the day, gabby remembered where she parked. and that's it. >> no noise, nothing else. >> now you're in a unique position, pause there are two very polarized sides of this debate. what do you think is critical in bringing together those two sides of the gun debate. >> it's a complicated issue. there's not one reason. it's pretty perplexed. one of the thing that is we need to do first is to balance up the politics of the issue. the gun lobby has been doing an

influenced james bennett. one of the other parts of this is to try to keep the dialogue going in all parts of the country, not just here in new york california and around the entire country that wants something done on this position. >> what does reasonable policy look like? >> we've traveled around the country. and, you know, we've visited a lot of states. getting ideas on what this looks like from places like alaska or north dakota. after traveling around and figuring this out, things ride to the top.

like closing the loopholes. >> closing the loopholes at gun shos and over the internet. why do we allow criminals this very easy way to get a done. it's illegal for them to do that. but they can go through the process without a background check. so it's those things, issues around domestic violence, which have been having some success. >> yeah, i know this is important to you. >> gabby was in washington last week with members of the u.s. senate. it looks like we're going to get our first hearing with the senate jew dish rare committee. so gabby met with senator leahy about that. the day gabby was injured, the

shooter brought two magazines. the first was emptied in 15 seconds. every bullet hit somebody. >> and do you have relationships with the nra that you can bridge that a little bit? >> we've tried. you know u i've spoken with some of the leadership at the nra. there's things that the nra does that are a good job with regard to gun safety. but their organization, we feel, has changed other the last several years. >> into what? >> in a direction that i believe is to support the gunman ewe facttures as mum as possible. and that doesn't make a statement.

>> gabby, are you hopeful about it? >> yes, hopeful. i think what you're asking is, so, you know, the future, are you -- hopeful? >> optimistic? >> optimistic. yes. optimistic. >> it will be a long road, i think. >> a long, hard haul, but i'm optimistic. >> it's been 30 years of folk that is want common sense legislation passed. >> i know you are both would recollecting on the book. what is the one common message you want to relay? >> enough is enough.

>> yeah, it's exactly what gabby said after -- [ applause ] . >> i moean, do we really want t live in a country where the death of 37 kindergarteners, the response was nothing? >> nothing. >> we need to try to stop incidents of mass shootings that occur. there's about 30-35 incidents with guns in this country every day. i mean, not only the deaths, but how about the costs? the cost of society is pretty great. so there's a lot to be done there.

>> so, grks abby, how about we end this on enough is enough? >> good. >> and thank you all. [ applause ] >> ladies and gentlemen, please stay in your seats for a moment. >> our campaign 2014 debate coverage continues. tonight at 8:00 on c-span,live coverage of the minnesota governor's debate.

all right, we're back. i hope you're finished with lunch. otherwise, they told me i had to interrupt you and stop the conversation and make sure you're paying attention. i hope that's not the case.

if everyone can hear me at the back. great. thank you so much for your attention. i hope you enjoyed lunch. i'm sure you're looking forward to our panel discussion. today's topic is latino women in congress. latino women first have what it takes to tackle the tough issuings, reach consensus and follow through on the delivery of their con stitch wents. let me remind you, you'll see on the skrocreen in a minute. you're going to be able to ask questions. i encourage you to have them ready. now, to our distinguished panel,

we have from california's 38th district, linga sanchez. . and, of course, we have from california's 46th distriblgt, thank you so much. i know michelle was here the other day from new mexico first distriblgt. lady, thank you so much for being here today. we really appreciate i. >> our pleasure. why don't we start with a brief introduction round.

we'll go in order if you'd like to start. >> hello, everybody. hello. come on. >>. [ speaking foreign language ] >> better known as grace. i've been in california many years. i've been in politics, city council and state assembly and now in congress. it has been a long battle. >> there's still the ability for us not to be able to have the support that we should have on issues that are really critical to us.

not only in immigration, but the movement on mental hemt. we have women veterans and we need to impress upon the women who are here. 23 you're getting into politics, be sure you know what you're getting into. it's to help you achieve a dream. that's where we deliver. they can have a hand out and be with us to fight the good fight. >> i think the issue is not only what latinos do for latinos in congress, but what we do for the population? it's not only latino issues. it's for everyone. >> absolutely. just to piggy back on what grace

has said. the fact and the reality is just not what we need do do. all issues are latino issues. it isn't just immigration. it isn't just immigration. we're concerned about job creation, our economy. we're concerned about a better education for our children, our environment. every issue that is important to our country is important to our latino community because we are equally and sometimes, even more negatively impacted by many of the issues we address here in congress. to piggy back those who may not know, i am the congresswoman for the 40th congressional district. it is a district that has like 87% latino, a huge immigrant population. a support minority district with pockets throughout the city that

traditionally have been controlled by the white angelo communities and so, it's in transition and it's very, very difficult sometimes to be able to relate to some of the power bases in the various parts of the district. so, one of the challenges that we have as latinos is to help those who are not latino that we are not a threat to them. but that we can be equal partners with them in helping to improve the quality of life not just latinos, but of all people within the country. >> from california's 38th district. i think it's important, too, to say that i was joking at the beginning, the gates foundation here in the u.s., the high school students next door were asking me about world affairs, gender equal thety, the

environment, all kinds of questions. that's what kids are interested in now, latino or otherwise. >> i'm linda sanchez. i represent the 38th congressional district of los angeles. thank you. it's interesting because i think the success of the latino community in terms of representing our community is very generational and i think the next generation coming up doesn't so much see themselves in labeled or boxes like la tin youth or future latino leader. they look at issues through a lens in which all of their friends are concerned about. particular issue or they're interested in particular issues. and so, they don't necessarily see the you know, that they're limited by a label and one of the things i want to talk about on the panel is that oftentimes, as women and as latinos, we sort

of get labeled as we're latinas in congress, therefore, we only care about certain issues. immigration being the top one. immigration is a very important issue. all of us serve on different committees. grace talks about transportation issues and infrastructure investments. lucille is on the appropriations committee. she talks about job creation, infrastructure investment, on and on. loretta on armed security. she talks about issues of national security and our armed forces and their readiness and i serve on the ways and means committee, which deals with tax policy, so, we're not all focused solely on one or two issues. we happen to be latinas. we happen to be very underrepresented in the congress. if you look at the elected representatives at the federal level, women in general, we're just over 50% of the population.

we have a historic number of women currently serving in the house and senate. it's almost 19%. but that's still a gross underrepresentation and then the if you talk about latino women, it narrows further. so, we're here to say to all of you who may not have ever thought you would run for public office, for women especially i think sometimes, they need permission or they need a champion to tell them they can do it. every single one of us up here is here to say you can do it and we want to help you do it because the united states congress, which is supposedly the most democratic body at the frafl level because you must be lektded in order to serve in the congress. you cannot be appointed to serve in a house seat, is supposed to look like the america it represents. and currently, it doesn't. so, we need to encourage folks to think about and particularly, women, to think about running

for public office at all levels because certainly, certainly at the national level, we really need that perspective right now in washington, d.c. >> thank you so much. opening remarks. >> thanks for having us. thanks for being here in washington, d.c. people in washington, d.c., the power capitol of the world, need to see our faces here. as my sister, linda, was saying, they need to see our faces in the congress, but also in business. they need to see our faces in lobbying. in pointed positions. they need to see us in the state department. they need to see news the military. i represent orange county, california. if you've been to disney land,

you've been to my hometown. also my angels now. really great place to represent, but as lucille was saying about downtown los angeles, one of the places she represents and has for a while, the power structures are still the old power structure. meaning that the angelo saxons have the appointed positions, they are the business leaders and our community is not to be found in many ways, orange county is the epitome of that. orange county is now a third latino. of its population. and yet, really, all the power positions except for mine more or less, are held in traditional hands and so, how we move that, how we change that becomes so very important. not just in politics, but in business, in agencies, in government agencies.

that's what we're looking for ward to when we see young latinas and also when we see latinas who have been working in community, who have been working in businesses decide to branch out, decide to throw their hat in the ring, decide to come and help us to get this done. that is incredibly important. i will just say that as hard as it is to be latina some days, it's even harder to be a woman in politics. okay, so, my congressional friends that are black women say it's the double whammy. first, we get hit because we're women and then we get hit because we're minority and i have seen that play out over and over even within the congress as we try to get our work done. >> thank you. now that we talked about the proverbial glass ceiling, why don't we start with that and

let's have that as our first question. equal pay, equal status in the workplace. i know we just touched upon that subject, but let's get into that with more substance. if you want to start. let's talk about the glass ceiling. in politics, too. >> sure. there is very much still a glass ceiling in place. i love to tell this story. when nancy pelosi became the first woman speaker of the house, we saw a movement. we saw things changing. we saw one of these barriers being broken down. don't get me wrong, made a lot of progress. still a long way to go. i was rushing to vote and i jumped into an elevate or as th doors were closing and there were to two southern gentlemen there who were trying to be polite and make conversation with me and one turned to me and he said, so, whose office do you work in? i'm wearing a suit, wearing my member pin and i was angry and i

was just about to blast this guy, then i remembered my mom always told me, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, right, so i turned to him and said sweetly, oh, i don't work for somebody in this building, i have my own office in this building and he turned and looked at his friend like deer in the headlights and doors open and they scurried out. because even though we had a female speaker of the house, the assumption was that i'm in the c capitol, i must be the secretary or the staffer or the interron. so, i think there are huge perceptions that women have to overcome. i think we're judged by far harsher standard. i used to tell people i would see some of our male colleagues come to the floor in crumpled suits and it looked like they combed their hair with a fork. if a woman got to the floor to

give a floor speech and she looked like that, they would rip her apart in the press based upon what she looked like, so we still have many, many double standards and harder standards and hurdles we have to overcome in order to be taken seriously. i see it as part of my charge as a member of congress to challenge people when they have assumptions about who or what i am and what i can accomplish. you don't always have to do it in a a mean way. you can do it very sweetly and make your point just as strong than if you yell at somebody about why would you think x, y or z. but it's very tough and there are good male colleagues that understand, but the biggest strength that i get being a member is sharing experiences and getting help from my sisters that are up here on the stage with me. >> so, i mean, you're already trail blazers, but you're actually in a position to do something about,ba