committee on spectrum use. that is on c-span 2. >> according to multiple news sources, u.s. solicitor general allocation will be the president's choice for the supreme court. 50-years old and worn and york city, she is a graduate of princeton, oxford, and hard university. she became the first woman dean of harvard law school. she was chosen as solicitor general by president obama. the formal announcement is expected as early as monday morning and we will carry it live on the cspan network and online at." c-span.org. this week on q &a, ted leonsis.

he produces films. v"a%y>> many canadian americanse to work in a mill town and my family and jack kerouac's family became very close. i wrote a thesis on jack kerouac and allen ginsberg contended william burroughs. i met them and ended up taking the class with them. >> tell us more about the jack kerouac. >> he wrote an influential book

called "on the road." it started the beat generation, a counter cultural view of the world. he went to columbia university. while it was there, he met allen ginsberg who wrote an important book called "howl," one of the most important poems of the 1960's. >> palle about william burroughs? also a great writer, the three of them became celebrities in lifestyle that they were trying to create. in the new york music scene, you had jazz and the beat and they were the precursors of the free love hippie movement. >> how did you meet them? >> they were giving a lecture at the cultural library and i went over and told them that i had some family relations with keruoac, and they thought they

could get closer to the family by being nice to me. they sat for interviews and they helped me -- it was fun bringing them into the georgetown radio station and having ginsberg read "howl," and doing some transmissions on-air. >> you went out of your ways to find these guys. did you think they would come with you to class? >> i've learned an early lesson that many time teachers ask and people will say yes. there was a case where i wanted to get a good grade, i wanted to do good primary research, so i went above and beyond the call of duty and went to a published reading and hung out afterwards and introduced myself. sometimes you never know unless you ask, you might get a yes.

>> what did you study at georgetown? >> american studies and foreign service. >> how did you end up there? >> a strange choice because mom and dad didn't go to college. i never visited the campus. a guy whose lawn i mowed was a georgetown graduate and we became friends. he asked me where i was going to apply to college and i said i did not really know. he was a mentor to me to get into the university. >> did you ever have the goal to make a lot of money? >> i did not. i did not know i was poor until i went to georgetown. my mom was a secretary, and i think the best year my parents had was $28,000. >> one of the reasons you wrote the books is that you were with america online and made a lot of money.

>> i was an entrepreneur right out of college. i started my first company, a publishing company, and i raise some venture-capital and i was lucky enough to sell to reuters for $65 million. at a very young age, i came into a lot of money. i was programmed if you work really hard and you were a success and make a lot of money, then you would feel successful and you would be happy. the book is really positing that if you are happy, you can be successful, but if you are successful, you are not necessarily happy. >> that first company was called the list. >> it was an online data base company around the launch of the ibm pc.

the front of the book was interview with software executives like bill gates and the list was a directory of what software worked with what hardware. it was a precursor to a website like a yahoo! that had a directory of everything to find everything, easily organized. >> what did you sell that company for? >> $65 million. after taxes, i made $20 million and i declared victory. i have great empathy for my players now, the young people who we just sign to a 12-year, $125 milliondeal. you're not really prepared for what notoriety and what a big paycheck will bring to you. what i found is that i lost my way a little bit and then i got on the wrong airplane, and the airplane developed all sorts of mechanical difficulties.

we prepared for a crash landing. that is the big pivotal moment of my life. first you always read about people dying with a smile on their face. around the plane, no one was smiling -- weeping, crying or praying. i had a high level of faith but i started to negotiate. i literally said, it will be a good year if you let me live. i promise that if i get a second chance, i will leave more than i take, and i will try to be additive, i would not just be a taker. that following weekend, i sat down and said, i've got this do over, i got the second chance, what do i do? i did not have any tools available to me and i had this big pivot in my life.

so i ended up making this list of 101 things to do before i died. it has helped me envision a lot of the twists and turns of my life, possibly, but it also put me on the path and road to be a student of happiness. that's where my journey started, the library of congress. you go when you read online in digital format the declaration of independence, and those red lines and black lines -- the only sentence that was not edited and had no added value by any of the founding fathers was life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. it is in our dna as a country. it is in our genetics as a people, and as students and as business people we are not programmed to think about a quest for happiness and self- actualization.

>> when i picked up your book and read it trying to figure out you and your background, there are some mixed messages. it is published by regnery, the conservative publisher. you got help writing it. it is also endorsed by maria shriver and chris wallace and some others. i would guess that you were a liberal. fill in the blanks here. how does all of this go together? >> i have never put a label on myself. i am fiscally conservative. my father was first generation from greece. i truly believe in the american dream. i think i embody some of it. i ended up owning a sports team and companies. i have done well and i believe

that the economy and capitalism is that part of what makes america great. but at the same time, i realize that being happy -- the biggest part of it is being an active participant in communities of interest and voluntary and giving back and having social awareness, they are equally important. i am physically very conservative but i am socially progressive. >> you gave money to john mccain and barack obama. >> i did both, and it was interesting when john and i were working on the books -- john buckley -- we put out a formula, what makes for success and happiness -- it was right there in the primaries. we wrote down each of the candidates seeing who scored the highest. based on the formula, obama's was the highest. high levels of self expression,

he was a community activist, he showed great empathy, he was always looking at what a higher calling of the position was. so that started to lead us to -- is it just about personal happiness? companies that are happy, campaigns that are happy, and pursue this formula, they end up getting the approval of the highest levels of value. it is a personal journey, but the back of the book talks about how businesses -- like google as an example. i wrote a story about how google withdrew from china. all the experts and wall street analysts said you cannot leave china. china is the fourth biggest internet market, the biggest internet market soon, the world's biggest emerging economy. it is bad business. but sergei said, one of the co- founders of the company, said that i cannot be happy there

now when that they are arresting students. i cannot be happy knowing that they want to crash my network and steal trade secrets. he pulled out and did the right thing the right way, and the morale of the company went up. you watch -- the business will get even stronger. >> there are a lot of things you're involved with. before we get to your documentary productions that you have, i want to show you a clip of you at a newspaper editors meeting, and bring us up to your thinking. >> in the future, editors are going to be bartenders. i know that is a terrible thing. the role of an editor will be social. i am bringing you into a place, into a bar, i am going to give

you the news, i'm going to bring other people around to talk to the news, i will package that up for you. that is a great new position in job. >> it is a lousy description of what the society will be. the pulitzer prize and what the seattle times did with its investigation on the 747 -- how the hell is that going to happen on the internet? i do not know those people. the reporters took months working on a story like that. it was the biggest industry in town, boeing, saying that he is not credible, the papers are irresponsible. they produced wonderful work that will have major impact on us. how will that happen if we are bartenders? >> 13 years ago, talking to the editor of the "atlanta journal- constitution." >> i was the president of america online and was an evangelist for this new media

and how it would level the playing field and bring education and democracy to a very wide audience. and i just believe and i was using terminology 13 years ago which is very relevant today. google and facebook and twitter really are the platforms for the new consumer. i think the newspaper that he was referencing is no longer in business. there are 167 newspapers that are in chapter 11 proceedings right now. part of the reason is that i am always felt that some media view themselves as high priests. he was offended by the concept of being a bartender. what i meant by that, i was using sam malone in "cheers" the big show at that time where sam would activate discussion. that is what it does -- informs you but allows you to activate

your social awareness and discussion points with family members and friends. >> what were the 13 years that you were at america online. >> 1993-2006. i have owned the washington capitals and the mystics, i own 44% of the verizon center right around the corner from here as well as the washington wizards. >> the mystics are -- >> the wnba basketball team. we have a good team. and they are now going to the playoffs. >> let me go to the discussion 30 years ago and get your reaction. >> there's the sensitiveness newspapers themselves bring to some of this.

it is not going out of business. television did not go out of business with cable. but i will tell you that 10 years ago i sat in a conference where ted turner was on with cnn and there were broadcast executives saying this is not journalism. this is chicken noodle network. you're spending too much money. and time offered $5 million for it. and he did not do it. now they would pay $7 billion for it. this is just a matter of -- do you embrace or do you push away? newspapers are not going out of business. there is a way to take your core competency and move up the food chain in this new media. >> how about your prediction? >> i was wrong. they are going out of business. they could have moved more aggressively more quickly into

the new media. newspaper are now starting to get more active in blogging, starting to realize the importance of video. they're really trying to embrace that all of their consumers are not reading printed paper. prices have gone up for gas. humans charge too much money. what is ironic is that the free product, i am a subscriber to the "washington post", their free product on the web is better product than what i paid for newspaper form. i get the newspaper in the morning, it does not get updated, it is mostly black and white, it gets my hands dirty. i go on their web site -- i have video and audio, updated all the time. the genie is out of the bottle with this new media because it

is bandwidth and the amount of investment that has been made and infrastructure on the internet. it was a matter of time before the new media really became the primary media. newspapers now really are behind what has happened. >> the area of your book where you are most critical is the whole business of the merger with time. give us the time frame again. what year did they get together with the merger? >> 1989. in my book, you will note that i say that the fifth tenet for happiness is finding a higher calling and telling the mission that your company or you personally are on. aol, when we were a stand-alone company, our mission relief was bringing democracy around the world, introducing the magic of interactivity to the largest

audience possible. we wanted to get america online. and then we acquired time warner, and our mission became $11 billion of profit. we used to always obsess and worry about how happy 250 million customers were. in post-merger, all we worried about was 15 wall street analysts. you could really apply aol's downfall to the day of the merger. i cared about our customers and i will say that no one comes to work motivated by trying to generate free cash flow so we can pay off cable debt. my people come to work because they want to work in a company that has a double bottom line. that concept is central in my book. every movie i made, on my

sports teams, every business i invest in now, they have to have strong bottom lines -- double bottom lines. here at c-span, you want to get big penetration and get good cable fees. you want people to be able to support it and sponsor it. you want critics to like what you're doing. but you are trying to change the world. you are trying to bring information to lots of people. you're trying to get people to understand how their government functions. and so you created a double bottom line business. once you overindex one way or the other way too much, businesses get out of balance and they cease to exist. >> here is a line i want to read to you.

explain what happened in your head when you are merged and you are based in virginia and time warner was based in new york. what is managing for wall street? >> you look at the financial ramifications of every decision that you're making, and your time horizon of goodness is 90 days, the next quarter ahead of you, as opposed to what is in the best long-term interest of our key stakeholders, our employees, our customers? you start to scrimp a little bit on service. you start to scrimp on content -- maybe this is a nice to have. once everything goes to the financial filter, so you can meet a financial analysts' expectations -- but the financial analysts are a step behind what the consumer wants. i believe that if you make a

service, and you have arilk good business model and you execute, then wall street will report on what your prospects are. but when you start to try and trick or to get into cahoots with financial analysts, and then the whisper number that you have to meet. you put all of your time and industry around the wrong thing. right now and there is a call to get back to basics. money is not the product. we saw what is going on with goldman sachs right now, when they were making money, a product in and unto itself. america operates best when they know what their customers want and there is fantastic and innovative products and services. consumers will pay for that. if you have that going, the virtual cycle, the financials will speak for themselves and

then wall street can make their bet on you or not. >> i read all through this period from the different side where people talk about this, but you talk about the arrogance. >> i think the traditional media is very disconnected with mainstream america. i also think that there's an arrogance of america versus the rest of the world. today there are 2 billion people online all around the world. only 10% of the world's internet population is here in the united states. even though we perfected and helped invent the internet, we are a small piece of the overall pie. i laud what our government is trying to do right now in trying to make broadband and connectivity like clean running water, like electricity. we have fallen behind in a game that we invented. we do not innovate, using the internet as a platform for these

new services. when you look at the uptick in the economy, and the iphone and all the applications, the ipad and some of the things that google is doing, that is still the engine that will drive our economy. if we do not have the basic power plan, we will fall behind. they like the world just like those newspaper editors, they like the world the way that it was. it was good when people -- we live in this world of faster, better, cheaper industry. we live in a world where bandwidth and power is doubling every 18 months. if you are a bigger company, you do not want innovation because that would change the business model that you have developed for the last 20 or 30 years.

>> in aol, 2007 -- you started with a company called redtape. >> that was a new media company that merged with aol. >> and then you merged with time warner. and then there is the sports team. what else is there? >> i started to make movies. i realized that movie making helped exercise the creative part of my personality but also was a way of giving back. i coined the term, filmanthropy. some films will be critically acclaimed and do well enough in theaters and get picked up by hbo, but alsouse the medium to ignite a change, a perception, or activate voluntarism or activate charitable giving.

i have made three movies. they have all run high on a double bottom line. one won an award last year. you get people to volunteer and write checks for the charities that they focus on. >> the first movie you did, a documentary called "nanking." where did you get the idea? >> i read an obituary in the new york times. it was a wonderful story about iris chang who had written a book about a forgotten holocaust. i had never seen those two words strung together, forgotten holocaust. and her picture was so warm and inviting, and this article about her, when i came home, i googled her and ended up buying

the book. if you like this book, you'll like these books, it says at amazon. there were a couple of books that had just come out. i bought all three books and i was absolutely devastated by this time in history. i was shocked by how strong a moral code westerners -- americans had and how the chinese worshipped these people as gods and goddesses at a time when americans were looked at poorly all around the world. here was a time in history when individuals did the right thing, they had moral courage, they did things out of the goodness of their heart to help. and now these books were coming out because china had become

more populist and open and the stories were being told. i just had to help tell the story in a movie. >> here is an excerpt from your documentary. it is about a minute and a half and we will continue to talk about that. >> those are chinese gentleman

talking about 1937, nanking the capital of china, that japanese were bombing them and then came in and did what?

>> it is called the rape of nanking and it was a terrible time in history. there was an invading army. anyone who was chinese that could get out of the city fled. there were refugees left in nanking, and the japanese occupied, and during a very short period of time killed a lot of people. they raped a lot of women. and it was not acknowledged until the movie came out, they were not acknowledging that this time in history have really ever occurred. but there are lots of people that were considered deniers, that the episode was overblown. we found survivors and we were able to catalog and interview them. we went all over the world and got unbelievable footage, and as you saw, we won the editing award at sundance back in 2007.

and then we were able to get 12 hollywood movie stars to bring to life diaries and letters that were written by these people who were in nanking, china. it was really unbelievable because there was no e-mail and there was no phone. there were people who were writing their diaries, hour by hour, what they saw and what they heard. and then there was a priest, a minister, who went out andsurreptitiously filmed, actual film that got smuggled out of the country and brought here via the state department and shown at the u.s. capitol. >> tell us how much you spent on making that. >> it was a major endeavor, $2 million. >> did you get your money back? >> i do not think i will get my money back but i did so well on the other bottom line, bringing a lot of attention to this time

in history, it did very well on hbo, we won an emmy award, we won a peabody award. i have been paid that so many more times than just economically. >> in 1998, iris chang sat there and was interviewed for her book. in 2004 she committed suicide. in 2007 you made this film. i want to go back to 1998. i want to warn you, this is the roughest stuff that i think we ever shown in this program. >> that is the photo of a woman, a rape women, who is being forced to pose in front of a japanese soldier naked. they found these photos in the walls of some of the japanese soldiers. they took them, and some time the people in the local photo

developing would make copies. i still have problems looking at that. that is a woman being impaled after she is being raped. 5=+v>> that is down here. where did you find this? >> this came from china. it came from the chinese archives. >> and the photo above it? >> that is a picture of a woman who has been gang raped and as you can see, she has been tied to the chair so that she can be raped whenever the soldiers were in the mood for it. again, i have a hard time looking at these pictures even now. how a human being could do this to one another? >> it is really moving to see iris. i became friends with her

she believes there is a reason that i read this obituary and said that iris had always wanted to make a high-quality film because you cannot tell this story just in print and in the black-and-white photographs. i did not know. i don't think there's anything positive when an army invades and occupies a city and basically takes hostage young men and women. and the japanese were using china as a launching pad for world war ii. there was a deep distrust between the chinese and japanese. nanking was the capital of china at the time. ironically, that city fell. it was very embarrassing to the chinese.

in fact when the people's army was created afterwards, china -- one of the reasons china is such a strong singular nation is because of what happened then. why would we ever let a smaller nation like japan come in and overrun and occupy our country? they look at the rape of nanking the way that israel looks at the holocaust, never again, and they fortified themselves. they have one of the strongest militaries. >> at the wikipedia article on iris chang, it has the three notes that she wrote -- suicide notes. the second one i wanted to read to you because, based on your book, you might be able to give us some insight.

here is a woman that's been all this time talking about it and she ended up killing herself with a gun. she wrote this on the day -- the day before she shot herself. and she had had a nervous breakdown the time before that. >> certainly she was deeply troubled. and equally as sad, one of the heroes in the book was a woman

from ohio. she is called the american goddess of nanking. she was able to save 15,000 young women. this group of westerners created a safe zone and are credited with saving 100,000 people. when she came home after a finally liberated nanking, she also took her own life. in her notes, she said that she wished she had been able to do more. it is a very tough time in history, and i look at my movie as an almost anti-war movie. there is no right or wrong but it shows that bad things happen to innocent civilians when a nation occupies that city.

>> here is some more, another 1.5 minutes from your documentary.

>> we learned the extent of the destruction. we came across dead people every 100 yards. the bodies of the civilians had bullet holes in the back. they were trying to flee, and these people had been shot from behind. >> were you surprised that the japanese participated? >> those are some soldiers who were actually there and some of them have since passed on. i think it was there in of the light, getting some things off their chest.

what we wanted to do successfully is that we did not want to have a point of u.s. film makers. we just talked to survivors, the soldiers who were there, and read verbatim from the diaries and brought all that together with pictures and videos. i will be honest -- i had some threats against me made by some right-wing japanese, and there were some protests. they say there were not 21,000 women who were raped. and i say, ok, how many were raped? and they say less. 15,000? 13,000? is that ok? and so i understand what happened to poor iris chang. she broke the news with this book and she was ridiculed mercilessly -- that picture that you say happen on this day in this city, it could not been in november because look at the

way the sun is setting, so if this picture is dated wrong, that must mean the rest of your book must be wrong. she took it personally that she was on trial in this court of public opinion. >> her suicide -- talking to her parents, was there any evidence that she had depression before this started? >> i do believe that she had some depression. if you are all around this subject matter for enough, you can see how it would really add to a darkness that would set in, because it was a horrible part of life. my movie tried to show that even in the darkest times, there is light. even in the most gruesome times and the westerners who stayed behind were great heroes as well as many of the chinese to stay behind and banded together. that is what is at the heart of

my book. being part of the community, finding a higher calling, volunteering and giving back, getting out of the eye and serving collectively, those are all traits that make for happiness and self actualization. every one of those westerners -- woody harrelson plays the role -- reads the diaries of a harvard medical school-trained doctor who was working in nanking. >> the americans believe the great many of the chinese would go also. hospitals would have to close. one cannot help feeling that leaving right now would be passing up an opportunity for service of the highest kind. >> the u.s. government sent boats and trains to get everyone out and these 12 people stayed behind.

he wrote this beautiful letter home to his wife saying that i cannot come home. i will never be able to look in the mirror knowing that i left. and i left people behind to die unnecessarily. and you as my wife would not love me knowing i was less of a man than you thought you had married. those are the kinds of episodes that we want to dwell on. if you do the right thing the right way, you become self- actualized and you'll be happy. these people were heroes and their stories have never been told. >> you can watch this documentary free on something called snagfilms. >> i started a documentary and i realized that there were so many great and talented filmmakers, they make these wonderful movies but there are not may be theaters that will show them.

they would rather show batman and superman and transformers. so these good work films do not reach a wide audience. knowing a lot about the internet, and using the concept of filmanthropy, that people wanted to do good, i did a business called snagfilms.com, and it is doing great. you can watch movies like "nanking," like "super size me." if you like the movies, you can snag it and embed it on your blog or your facebook page and let your audience watch the movie. now we have about 80,000 virtual movie theaters opened. we reach a couple of hundred million people every month. we're streaming 20 million

movies per month. and we sell advertising and we give half the ad revenue to the filmmaker so they are getting revenues, but we work with every filmmaker to pick a charity that they want to support, and we embed that charity right into the movie. we're supporting about 455 charities right now. i am very proud of that in that i think it is going to be a big business. i think it will have lots of revenue and lot of traffic but we will support of a lot of charities and help filmmakers to break through that only 500 movie theaters showing independent movies. al gore's movie was only in 500 movie theaters. not a lot of people saw it. this will be the youtube for good work movies. >> mark cuban has some landmark theaters. he owns the dallas mavericks and you can see him -- you are

in the sports world. what is that about you guys? >> i think what happens is that you make your wealth in a field of endeavor like high technology. mine was america online. mark opens yahoo and made a lot of money. nothing brings the city closer together than a sports teams. we've seen now with the washington capitals. charities, our players supports many charities, so that is a double bottom line business. i started to make movies and7]'i will only make good work movies, i will not make -- i will only make filmanthropy, because i want to get back. i like exercising to create a

part of my personality through filmmaking warm writing books. >> where did you get the name snagfilms? >> if you liked the movie and virtual movie theater. it is based here in washington as well as tribeca in new york. >> how many people work there? >> a couple dozen people right now. it is growing pretty fast. one of the founders of aol was one of the investors in it. one stop shop for independent film and documentary films, and really be the film maker's best friend. if we can do that and bring these good work films to the widest audience possible around the world, we think that we will not only be contributing to society as a whole but build a good business.

>> over the history of documentaries, an overwhelming number have been done by left- of-center people. >> i think that is because a lot of foundations that were funded are liberal. i think what you're seeing now is that reality television and youtube, a documentary as a way of expressing, it is becoming second nature to young adults. i think you'll see lots of students. my son is at the university of pennsylvania right now and they teach you to express using video, because bandwidth is so available and the cost of movie making is going down so low. i think it was a short form and documentary film becoming very popular with young people as they enter the workforce. we're going to see an explosion of views, left, center, right,

business, charity, all using this media as a way to get their message out. >> what has been the most watched documentary on snagfilms? >> some have got millions and millions of hits. we had one on the baseball season called "fantasyland," men giving up their lives with their families because they're so inundated with fantasy baseball. we have one about health. we have a moving one about a young man who goes away to drinking game in a fraternity and dies, and the mother gets really upset not just because her son dies, because she realizes that more kids die every year with alcohol poisoning in high school and college than died during 9/11. she takes it on herself and makes this movie.

snagfilms premiered it and then we were able to get fraternities and colleges to show it as a public-service announcement. you can die by overdosing on alcohol. fraternity life is all about drinking and being accepted, and 3000 kids every year lose their life because of it. >> do you rent or lease the documentaries? >> our deal is that we get them for free and we split the revenue 50/50, and we sell it like a cable model. we're getting $25 per thousand from great advertisers. and advertisers want to run their ads in this high-quality content. this is not youtube video. this is real, hollywood of the producers of "nanking" won an academy award for "twin

towers." you're going to see sites like hulu and snagfilms, they will be the precursors of the next few years. >> can you give an idea of revenues? >> we would still little under $10 million this year. we will be profitable probably and our third quarter of this year. so seven quarters of investment i profitable. >> what is the long term? >> for me, i would like to get one million virtual movie theaters opened. getting that donated by consumers where they can distribute.

÷t=we hear a lot in this busins about user-generated content like youtube. i think our next trend is to see youtube distributed content. consumers -- i am on facebook with 5000 friends. i can take a movie that is important to me, put it intoywky ñ will get an alert about the film, saying i liked it and you ought to watch it. i think that that is a trend and you can bring video that way and get distributing, get your message out. i think it is something that will bear watching. >> recently in the middle of your hockey playoffs, you wrote a blog i read. your plug is called "ted's take." everywhere you went people had remarks to make about the hockey team.

this? they were not saying niced3u: things to you because you lost. >> it shows how important a sports team is to your community. when the redskins win on sunday, monday is a happy day in washington. our team has been doing so well. i think that is a big responsibility. i don't just want our team to make the playoffs or just to win the stanley cup. i want to make millions of millions of lifelong members between fathers and sons and mothers and daughters. i want immortality for our team. you get your name etched into the stanley cup. nothing brings us closer than winning sports. i grew up in the 1960's as an only child, my dad took me to jets games. i remember the jets winning the super bowl with joe namath, and

my dad and i watching the game on tv and hugging and crying. and now we fast forward 40 years, my father passed away a couple of years ago, and last november the colts and tfá)2 js were playing again in the playoffs. on the nfl channel, they were and i was on the treadmill exercising, watching the game. and i had to get off the treadmill. the memories of me and my dad, growing up, holding his hand, walking into that stadium, they just came flooding back to me. it was very humbling to me. own a sports team where you can create a memory that 40 years later can make a grown man cry. i view it as a public trust. you have the psychological well-being of millions of people in the palm of your hand.

i think it is no different than being a politician. being a mayor. i was the mayor of my town in florida for awhile. and you feel that you were there to represent a large collection of people and hold the mirror up to them. and i think that is what owning a sports team is all about. i have a place down in vero beach and we've spent the holidays there. >> one of the things in your book is that there are no pictures of your family. >> it was not that kind of the book. my wife likes a little ít of privacy. my picture was on the cover. i think we thought that was enough. >> what is your prediction asf) to the future -- the things that you have been talking about -- the effect on politics? >> i think the country right now is growing furt@7)t(t further apart from its government.

we have seen now the teabaggers, and our president coming in with such popularity already fallen. dp]then in the middle areas -- e media -- and what c-span is so brilliant about, you not need"4 an editor or a filter to form your own opinion. 6you should be able to watch ad listen unabashedly to what is being done and read and said. h8gwthat was one of the founding premises of c-span. more and more in this new media, we need to have direct connection with those that serve us. i read all of my e-mails. i get 400 e-mails per day. i am on facebook. i blog four times a day. i read all the comments. i am intimate with what is

happening. ';ñwhat i see is that whensj yu campaign for office, you really are with the people. and then you get elected and you go into these hallowed halls and you have all of this security and you start to have what i called the theory of nine. you are a 10 and you get elected, and then you have a nine who is your chief of staff, and then he hires 8's, and they bring an 7's, and the people who are the 4's eventually running the country. there needs to be much higher empathy and more listening to what the community at large really wants. i think sometimes we in washington or in new york, the

high priests of the media, we'd tune out who our consumer is. and we start to listen to this vital few people that all have their points of view. as you well know, this city is like no other city in the world. it is very disconnected from what is happening in the city and the media people in new york are very disconnected many times to the rest of the country. >> the book is called "the business of happiness." our guest is ted leonsis. i thank you for being here. >> it was an honor for you to have me. >> for a dvd copy of this program, call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts. [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] î0z>> tonight, the kentucky republican primary debate. live coverage starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. the midterm elections are just six months away and could change the balance of power in washington. what the candidate debates that have already taken place in a key house, senate, and governor races across the country on line at the new cspan video library. it is free and it is cable's latest gift to america. this morning, we will talk with jack coleman