my message was wrong. but i think about those things, and i look back, and however, both the country and me and my family and my personal life are probably better off that i never got elected president. i am not just saying that out of fake modesty. i say that because i love legislation. i like legislating. and i just like that atmosphere. the more i thought about it, i am not really the executive type person. i have never been in an executive. i have always been a legislator. i have to tell you this. i love my anonymity. i really like going into a store and no one knows me. i like going into a restaurant and i do not need secret service or something like that. nobody knows who i am.

i have enough notoriety through the issues i am involved in that certain elements of society know me and know me well, but broadly speaking, it is a nice feeling to have that. that anonymity. once you get elected president, it is over with. as i think about it, i think my life has been more fulfilling. i think my personal life, my wife and my family, has been much more fulfilling. much more happy with my being in the senate than it ever would had been in the white house. remember, those trying to get bill humphries to run for president in 1988. we were really working on bumpers to run. i got him to come out to iowa --

the three of us -- it was paul simon, berkeley bedell, and me. we try to get them to run. after going around, he said to me and said, you know, i think, i think i could run a good campaign. i think i could even win the nomination. by gosh, i think i could win the presidency. but you know what? i would never have another happy day in my life. >> the splendid misery from the time of don adams, right? i went and watched your withdrawal speech at the washington-based college for the deaf. that was a good launching pad into your focus on the disabled. would you tell us about your interest in that? >> it started with my brother, who was deaf. i saw how he was discriminated against for a lifetime. i thought, if i could ever get

in a position to do something about it. well, i did. i got into congress, later in the senate. my first work in the house was -- my thought on disability was on deafness. that is what i was focused on. so i was involved in closed captioning and of setting up the -- and setting up the national captioning institute in virginia to caption pre-recorded tv programs. jennings randolph and i, the senator from west virginia and i, set up the first decoder box for jimmy carter in the white house. later, that led me, by the way, this was one of the things that not many people know about, but they know about my sponsorship of the americans with disabilities act. but before that, i did something else. i got a bill through called the television decoder circuitry

act, which mandated that every television set sold in america with a size 13 inch screen or bigger had to have embedded within the tv the chip that decoded that line. i got it through. and that is why you have that mute button you can hit now. all the lines come across the screen. my interest was in deafness. but later on, my nephew got -- my sister's boy, got injured in the military. got shot down and broke his neck. became a quadriplegic. he got out, went through rehabilitation in colorado, and then he wanted to go to college. i will never forget. called me up one day and said uncle tom, i cannot even go to college.

i said, you are at fort collins. what are you talking about? >> he said, i cannot get around on my wheelchair. i cannot get up the steps to go to school. they have classes on the second and third floor. and i cannot get there because there is no elevator. all of a sudden, my concept of disability started expanding way beyond, way beyond, deafness. also about that time, i met a young man by the name of danny piper, who had down syndrome. he played football. he acted in school plays. he was a magnificent young man. i had to start thinking about how many people with intellectual disabilities are up there like him in the shadows someplace?

so bit by bit, my concept began to grow. about that time in the mid to late 1980's, i found there was a movement in america to have a broad civil rights bill covering all disabilities. i came to the senate in 1985. in 1986, the democrats took the senate. two senators wanted to get me on the committee. john glenn, because he and i flew the same jet in the military. and then ted kennedy. and ted said, i want you on my committee and i said, i don't know, glenn wants me on his committee. i said, if i could work on disability issues, in your jurisdiction, if you could figure out how i could have that niche on your committee, i'd be

interested. ted kennedy went, let me think about it. within a day he got back to me and said i tell you what, you come on my committee, i'll form a disability subcommittee and you can chair it and i said, ted, i'm on your committee. and that's what gave me the position to be able to have the hearings, shape the bill and move the americans with disabilities act through the senate. >> was your brother still around? >> absolutely. >> what was that like? >> that was wonderful. there were two great moments in my time here. two or three with frank, my brother. one was passing the americans with disabilities act when i was on the floor and i gave my speech in sign language. to this day, bob kerrey will tell you about that because he was sitting in the chair. suddenly i started speaking sign sign language with no verbal noise and the recorder didn't know what to do, he didn't know

what to do. he sat there looking at me wondering what the heck was going on. so i gave a great part of my speech in sign language. and he always remembers because he said, what can we do? we didn't know what to do and my brother was watching that so my brother got to see that and he was very proud of that, about that. and he just always -- i just wish they had something like that when i was a kid because he realized that he was discriminated against, that he was limited in what he could do simply because he was deaf, limited not by being deaf but by society's perceptions of him. >> do you have any sympathy at all for the small organizations who had to invest much money that they may not have had in retrofitting facilities? that's some of the complaints, we don't have the money to build the ramps.

>> right after we passed the americans with disabilities act we passed a tax bill and we put in there a tax credit, credit, of up to $5,000 for any small business that has to wide know a -- widen a door or put in a ramp. to this day, a lot of small businesses don't know that although we've tried to broadcast it. up to 50% tax credit, up to $5,000 so most can get it done with very little expense and we've set up systems around the united states, like clearing houses, where if anyone as a problem, they have a question, they can call and they'll be able to tell them how to meet the requirements of the a.d.a. and a lot of it's so simple. i remember a school, debuque, iowa, called up. they were furious because of the a.d.a., they were going to have to replace all their water fountains in all three schools

and they put out a bid for it and the company came in and all the plumbing had to be changed. it cost a lot of money. they were furious. i sent my staff person out to meet with them and see what could be done. so he looked at it and he made a suggestion to the school board. he said i'll tell you what, beside every water fountain, put a paper cup dispenser and waste paper basket. that's all you need to do. so someone's in a wheelchair, take the paper cup, fill it up, put it in the waste paper basket. and that's compliant. there's a lot of people out there trying to -- trying to make money off this, say, well, yeah, you do all this and costs you millions of dollars and we can do that but a lot of times you don't have to do that. these are sometimes very simple things. >> this time going by so fast

and there's lots to talk about. you mentioned john glenn and military service. you've served a long time in the reserves when you were in the senate. i wonder how that affected things you had to do, like voting for war, what perspective did it bring? >> what affected me more than anything was my time in the service because i saw so many friends killed in vietnam. i did not serve in vietnam. i was in and out of vietnam but that's another story but i saw a lot of my friends and i remember another young man, i won't mention his name, but i saw him once at q.v. point in the philippines and i knew he'd been flying in vietnam. he was an a-4 pilot and i saw him and asked him how things were going and he was kind of quiet. i said, so what's the latest? he said i'm headed back to the states. i said, your tour's over? he said, no, i got canned, i can't fly anymore. i came back from a bombing run and i told my commanding

officer, i'm not dropping any more bombs and he said they had me on the next plane off that aircraft carrier back to the states so i asked him about all that and what he told me, i got so disillusioned by the vietnam war, and then the second thing that happened, after i got out of the military, i went in the reserves, i flew in the reserves. i was better trained, got more hours flying, flying in the reserves than i did on active duty. and yet it cost the taxpayers about one third as much. suddenly i'm thinking, we got to put more money into the reserves and the national guard, get more bang for the buck because they can do other things other than just being on active duty so that's why i have been a strong supporter of reserves, national guard units. and i also think that if we had more reservation and national guard rather than active duty, less opportunity for the generals to get us into wars,

things like that. >> what's the john glenn story? >> oh, i always wanted to fly airplanes when i was a young boy and i never flew in an airplane, never flew in any airplane until i was in college and a navy plane, when i was in navy rotc but i always wanted to fly so when i was a junior in high school, there was a picture in the des moines register of this marine major who had just broken the cross-country speed record from california to new york in an f-8 crusader. and his name was major john glenn. i took that picture and pasted it above my bed and said i want to fly that airplane and as my skill set and perhaps a little bit of luck would turn out, i did get to the fly that airplane. and of course john glenn went on, obviously, to be an astronaut. and went on to be a united

states senator. and so when i came to the -- when i first came to the house, i introduced myself to john glenn and so we talked about flying the f-8 and what was it like and when i came to the senate, we just always had that kind of relationship there. it was interesting fighter. it was the fastest plane at that time. it was first jet to go 1,000 miles an hour in level flight so glenn flew it, i flue -- flew it and we always had that bonding because not many people flew that airplane and a lot of people were killed flying it, too. that was the john glenn story. >> did you ever show him the clip? >> i never did. i don't have it anymore. i don't know what happened to it. once i went to college and went in the military my brother or somebody threw it away but the picture exists.

you can go back in the archives of the paper and find picture. >> you said there were a couple of special moments in your career besides a.d.a. i'm guessing one had to do with the passage of healthcare legislation? >> yes, absolutely. americans with disabilities act was the biggest point in my legislative career. but the affordable care act also because in that i was able to put in the prevention title and as it so happened, kennedy became very sick, as you know, and it sort of devolved on to chris dodd and me to get this done and so kennedy asked me in the beginning, since you're so involved with prevention and stuff, you take care of that. so the prevention title in the affordable care act, that's what we did. that was my deal. and think what it does. it means from now on you can get colonoscopies, breast cancer screening, cervical cancer

screening, cholesterol screening, all these things can you get with no co-pays and no deductibles. my idea was always to change our sick care system. i always said we never had a healthcare system but a sick care system. if you got sick, you got care, one way or the other. but there was nothing in our system to promote wellness and to keep you healthy in first place. so that's why i wanted that prevention title and it's taking hold and there's another part of the prevention title in which i got 15 billion dollars, billion, with a b, over 10 years, for grants to communities to set up community wellness programs and that's now happening all over america. where communities are getting together and saying what can we do to promote wellness in our community? and they're getting these grants. so to me, i like that part of my

legacy because i think it's going to take hold and it will promote wellness and more healthful living but there's something else i did. i'm also on -- i have been on the ag committee for 40 years. i was chair of two farm bills. two things that i point to with pride -- maybe three -- two -- one, i started a new conservation program. it's now called the conservation stewardship program. we have over 60 million acres in the united states now in this program. the concept behind it is this. that since world war ii in agriculture, the government paid formers subsidies based on what they grew and how much they grew. it to be a program crop and the more you grew, the more you got. that promoted bigger and bigger farms all the time. the more you got, you can bid up the price of land. it skewed the system. so i always thought, no, that's

wrong. what we need to do is to pay farmers not for what they grow and how much they grow but for how they grow it. are you a good conservationist? do you preserve soil and clean water? do you provide crop rotation and good tilt for the soil so that's what the program is. it's not that old but i think it's firmly established and more and more farmers are seeing the benefit of it. the farmers get a benefit of it and people living in cities and downstream get cleaner waters. our hunters like it because we have more cover for wild fowl, pheasants and ducks and things like that, for hunters. they like that. so that's another thing that i'm glad i was here to do. the other thing i did in the agriculture bill is i started something called the fresh fruit and vegetable program. i did an experiment, 2002 farm

bill. i got $5 million for four states, 25 schools in the states, 100 schools, try an experiment. what would happen if you gave kids free fresh fruits and vegetables, not in the lunch room but in the classroom, or in a kiosk in the hallway. not just at lunch time, but whenever they felt like it, in the morning if they were hungry. so i started that. 100 schools, four states. $5 million. in the last farm bill, in 2008, i was able to expand it because each one of those 100 schools are still in the program today. they love it. we found kids eating fruits and vegetables they'd never eaten before, fresh, fresh fruits and vegetables and they got those free because you always say, well, we have a vending machine and we always have a couple of apples in the vending machine but a kid with money is not

going to pay for an apple. they'll buy candy or cookie but if they get it free, they eat it, they like it, they don't go to the vending machine. >> in lunch rooms, when reporters have watched, when they go in their lunch bags, they end up in the trash can because you can't force kids to eat them. >> yes and no. yes and no. that's another thing. school nutrition standards i changed those, too, that's the school lunch program. but the fruit and vegetable program for kids is fantastic. now over $100 million a year. low income kids across america are getting free fresh fruits and vegetables with a lot of spill-over effect. kids in lunch room, they throw stuff away. they want hamburgers and french fries. that's right. so people have accused me of trying to tell parents what their kids should eat and tell the kids what they should eat.

i said, yeah, i'm guilty. i plead guilty. should we let kids eat what they want to eat? if they want candy bars in the morning, would any parent want their kid to eat candy bars all day long? or to stuff themselves with hamburgers or french fries every day? no parent wants that. parents want their kids to have healthy food. to the extent that kids revolt against that, i understand that. that will work for a while and pretty soon they'll start to change. things will change because kids will find as long as the food is prepared well, they'll find that a lot of healthy food is pretty darn good but people say, these kids, they throw it away and stuff. well, for a while. for a while. it will change. >> we have maybe four or five minutes left. you've told me some of the things you're proudest about. do you have any regrets over the years? >> oh, sure. oh, sure.

yeah. probably the biggest regret i have, the vote that i wish i could take back, was the vote on the iraqi war, resolution of george w. bush's. a lot of people say it was a resolution to go to war in iraq. no, it wasn't, it was a resolution to give the president the power to go ahead and initiate action in iraq and i voted for it and it was a bad vote, terrible vote. i was convinced at the time that the president did not want to go to war, that he only wanted this as a hammer at the u.n. to make the u.n. inspectors do their job in iraq. colin powell convinced me, not so much about the weapons of mass destruction, this was before that. but that the president would not go to war but this was just a hammer to give him the power.

i believed him. i was wrong. that was not a good vote at all. i suppose there are others but the others pale into insignificance compared to that one. but i'm sure if i went through all the thousands of votes i cast, i'm sure there's some others. >> the last thing i want to ask you about something you're synonymous with, iowa presidential politics. so are you going to stay involved in will you have the ability to be something of a king maker in the state when people are there? >> there's one thing i know, once you're outta here, you're outta here. i have no illusions about that i'm going to continue to be some grand poobah in the iowa democratic party. new people coming in, that's for them. to the extent i can be helpful, i will. i like politics. i still want to be involved some

way but not to the extent or in the role i have been playing the last few years. it just won't happen. but i intend to be heard. i intend to use whatever forums i have to continue to push a progressive populist agenda in america, one that talks about more equality and more opportunity for kids without anything, one that is more compassionate and more caring and one that understands what i've always believed, that with the right people and right policies, government can be a positive influence in people's lives. i still believe that. >> senator, it's difficult to fit 40 years in 45 minutes. there's so much more we could talk about but thank you very much for the time you've given us. >> thanks, susan.

>> wednesday, c-span interviews retiring congressional members. that is at 8:00 p.m. eastern, here on c-span. after more than three decades, congressman howard coble of north carolina that will retire at the end of this congressional session. he was first elected in 1984. prior, he served in the u.s. and coast guard reserve. minutes.own for 25 >> congressman howard coble, retiring after this session. you'll be the longest serving republican congressman in north carolina history. what do you think your legacy will be after 30 years here on capitol hill?

>> well, not unfavorable, i hope, peter. i hope it will be one that has been laced with credibility. we have interns coming throughout our staff year-round and many have political desires to run for office one day and they ask me what should we emphasize? i say, you emphasize credibility, accessibility. people back home expect to see their elected official and i think justifiably so. i go home just about every weekend. i did every weekend this year. i recall, having served with a fellow who could have been in the congress his entire life. he was that good. he was a good public servant. and he was defeated in the republican primary and i asked him what happened to our buddy. he quit going home, was the answer.

quit going home, they never saw him. so they showed him the gate that leads to the road out of town. >> legislatively, what are you most proud of? >> well, when i was elected in 1984, we were known as the furniture, hosiery, and tobacco -- textile and tobacco capital of the world. not true anymore. but they're still hanging on, all of those different occupations or professions. my mama was a textile worker so textile legislation was close to home with me. so i'd say accessibility and looking out for the -- back home, that the country did not suffer as a result. >> how has your district changed since 1985? >> oh, tremendously. when we were elected, we had a

very compact three-county district -- guilford, alamance and davidson. >> northern north carolina? >> northern north carolina, north-central north carolina. now, i've only stood one election under the new re-districting plan but now we have eight new counties, continue to embrace part of alamance and guilford, picked up portions of granville, orange and durham and coupled with the five complete counties, all new. it was quite an adjustment. most recently, we had -- that was altered somewhat. we kept portions of guilford, alamance, davidson. picked up a portion of rowan, which would be salsbury, randolph, solid republican county, home of the one of the best zoos in the world, pinehurst, golf capital of

america, lost all of that can re-districting. i tell you a story about pinehurst. dr. charlie norwood, now deceased, dentist from augusta, georgia. i went to his funeral in augusta. there was an old man about my age with a big sign with these words, "thanks, charlie." i wish it had been in the next morning's paper. but norwood always would go out of his way to put down pinehurst as opposed to augusta. never missed a chance to do that. so one day when i left the floor, one of my colleagues said, what's the makeup of your district? norwood heard the question and i said my district consists of the furniture capital of the world, high point. one of the best zoos in the world, i said to my colleague.

and then knowing that norwood was listening, i said it in a condescending tone, i said the golf capital of america in pinehurst. he came out of his seat. he said i'll give you furniture and zoo but you ain't taking golf. i told that story to the rotary club at pinehurst, or southern i told that story. i think it was pinehurst. that story was told then. they told norwood what i had done. he was waiting for me when i came back. i fondly remember that exchange. the furniture was gone. >> has it been the same in congress to develop

relationships with of their members? so.retty much it is partisan, it we've been in a republic were there are only two major parties. partisanship is going to be inevitable. that in and of itself doesn't bother me. i have good friends on the democrat side. my mommy and daddy were democrats. >> congressman howard coble, over the years, congress' approval ratings have gone up and down and currently they're pretty low. why do you think that is? >> very low. i'm not sure that i can put my finger -- get my fist around it because i don't so that much changing from the time i came

here three decades ago to now within the chamber but it's very low. of course, elected officials are easy targets. some folks are not going to be happy unless they're blaming some elected official for his or her problem. that could probably be a lot of it. but i think the president -- i've tried to be as nonpartisan as i can go this. it's difficult to do. i think the president particularly when it comes to foreign affairs, has been very inept, very disinterested, and i think it shows. that may well contribute to the most recent low marks. you're right, we're at the bottom of the barrel. >> you've worked with speakers since jim wright. who do you think has been most effective? >> newt while he was here.

i remember one time just after we -- the contract with america. and newt had us working until 11:00, 12:00 at night. and i had pretty good rapport with gingrich and one of my buddies about 10:00 one night said howard why don't you go to the speaker and see if he can make this 100 days 100 legislative days, give us an extra four, five, saturday, sunday, maybe even friday. i went to newt, i said, speaker, the troops are restless, they wonder if we can extend the 100-day time frame to 100 legislative days. he thought pensively for a few seconds. he said get back to work. i said, aye-aye, sir. we got back to work. but i think newt. >> you've also worked with

presidents since ronald reagan. who do you think had the best relationship with congress? >> i think reagan along with both bushes. i'm very high on the bushes. >> why? >> easy to be with. i just called george w. bush within the past month to wish him well. he called me back a week later. i'm glad -- i should have told some folks i had called him because normally, one time, the senior bush, sonny montgomery. you remember sonny montgomery. >> democrat of mississippi. >> long-time democrat of mississippi, good friend of the bushes. he said to me one day, you called the president after the defeat. you need to call him. and i did, sonny gave me the number. i called him that day. voice message. left my name and number. didn't tell the staff what i had done. the next day, george bush calls

our office. i don't recall back who answered the phone. kimberly, i believe. i think it was our front receptionist out front. she said, sure, you're george bush, and hung the phone up. the administrative assistant called and mrs. bush picked up the phone and he hung up the phone. you always need to tell your staff what you've done to avoid unpleasant surprises. but i'd say -- i'd go with newt as the speaker. >> congressman coble, during the clinton administration you served on the impeachment committee. looking back at that period of time, how do you think that will be viewed in future generation? >> you know, the late henry hyde, i won't each qualify to

say probably, the most eloquent orator in the congress. henry told me one time, i think i remember this correctly, he said i'm not wild about this impeachment but there are 23 americans serving active prison sentences for having committed perjury. how do you justify that and turn a blind eye to the president? he said, i can't do it. and i'll always remember henry saying that. and your question was how would it play with the passage of time. the order of it, which this came, and i believe he may be only one of two presidents who was impeached. am i right about that, peter? >> that's correct, he and andrew johnson.

>> north carolinian, by the way. >> via tennessee. >> via tennessee, yeah. >> congressman coble, what brought you to congress in the first place? what made you decide to run for congress? >> it started probably some years earlier when an old time lawyer, duke law school -- i'm not a duke fan, but duke law school, called me aside one day and he said i want you to run for the state legislature. this was 1968. he said when you go to vote, you turn to the republican side of the ballot and there's no names on there. how do you expect to build a party with no one willing to run for office and he convinced me i needed to run for state legislature and i did and was unfortunate enough to be elected. -- was fortunate enough

to be elected. that was in 1968. a good year for republicans. and then i served three terms in raleigh. strike that. i was appointed assistant u.s. attorney after my first term in our state capital of raleigh. that's what started looking ahead, maybe, the seat was known as the revolving door district. congressman richardson preyer, do you remember the name? pryor was elected in 1968. former federal judge, very good man. ran against bill osteen who later became u.s. attorney. and then ultimately was appointed to the bench. i forgot where i was going with this. >> why you got congress, how you got congress? >> back to mr. mcnary, the old lawyer. he encouraged me to run for congress, as well.

the revolving door started with the election of richardson pryor in his race with bill osteen. in 1972, upset of the year, gene johnson defeated richardson pryor in a solid democrat district. it would probably have been classified as the number one upset in the country. one-term congressman, gene was. he was defeated -- i'm sorry, the 1970's, the first one. then 1972, he was defeated by a rookie, good guy, robin brett. and i ran against robin in 1974 -- 1984. so that's -- that was the track. >> how long -- you've been on the judiciary committee quite a while, too, all 30 years?

>> all 30 years. >> why never the chairmanship of that committee? >> well, i told somebody, i told ed mcdonald, chief of staff this. i believe that lamar smith and bob goodlatte is serving now, i believe they were better lawyers than i. >> why that? >> just having observed -- i've always been a trifling student, indolent, lazy. and i just felt like -- i think i could have handled it but i think they were i think they were better equipped and more talented than i at the bar. >> congressman coble, one of your chairmanships is the subcommittee on the internet, intellectual property, et cetera. you've been pretty active on that issue, protecting intellectual property, et cetera.

when you first came here, the digital age was just kicked off. it's been 30 years. what have you done to promote, protect, in your view, telecommunications? >> well, the high mark of my congressional career would be serving on the intellectual property subcommittee. that's been a good fit for us and i've met so many interesting people as a result thereof. i've tried to emphasize the significance of intellectual property. patent trademarks, copyrights. what it means to the wellbeing of our economic society. and we've done a good job i think of disseminating that word. i would not be qualified to be an intellectual property lawyer. i'm not that good. because it's very complex, very intricate. you do it wrong, you pay a high price. but that would be the highlight

of my career up here. >> you've also worked on prison reform and prison issues, as well. yet did that pique your interest? >> when i was practicing law, my two areas would have been criminal law and the law of negligence. so it was coming into an area of the law with which i was not unfamiliar. >> and what -- where would you like to see the prison systems in america go? which direction? how would you like to see them reformed? >> i think prison overcrowding is one of the severe problems facing society today. i think probably we need to look more carefully at sentencing.

there may be -- there are many people confined in prisons today serving active -- serving active penalties for one of this, that or the other. those people probably should not be in jail. there ought to be some sort of second tier to free up some of the space because there's a time bomb waiting to explode, that is prison overcrowding. >> do you think maybe drug laws need to be reformed? which a lot of conservative republicans have called for. >> probably. i think that might well be first step. and i don't say let every jail bird loose on society. i'm not suggesting that at all but i do think that certain sentencing measures could be adopted that would result in freeing up space behind bars.

>> what's your advice to john boehner? >> well, i'm not sure he needs my advice. i think boehner, he's been criticized from within and without, but my reading on john boehner has been favorable. i think he's been a pretty good speaker. comes from a hard working family. his dad, i think, was on the bar. so john's duties were cleaning up the bathroom and cleaning up the decks at the end of a business day so he's been there, done that. >> looking around your office

here on capitol hill, two things i wanted to note. number one, there are photos of you with cigars, with cigar smoke. long-time cigar smoker? >> there's a cigar picture right there. i like what i call ponies, small cigars. at one time i was smoking probably five or six cigars, strike that. three or four cigars a day. now that changed to three or four cigars a week. then finally said i the heck with it and part of the reason was the staff didn't like it. some of my colleagues didn't like it. chief of staff, i think, led the fight on that. and i figured, what the heck, if it's annoying to them, uncomfortable for them, i don't have to have a cigar in my mouth every day. and i have been free of cigar smoke probably in excess of five

years. >> congressman coble, you've worked on a couple of issues that may not strike your colleagues as positive, such as limiting congressional retirement, term limits, cola increases, being careful about cola increases. have you gotten push-back from colleagues on capitol hill? >> when i came up here, i said i would try to get rid of the congressional pension. the pension of a lot of senior members who splayed things today. just to make a point, i vowed i would not take the congressional pension which i've not done and that's going to cost me a lot of money. that's one of the issues back home, today's issues, jobs, jobs and the economy, unemployment, all put into one hat. i'm drawing a blank. >> we were talking about money issues, you're not taking the pension. yes, sir. >> i have a bill in the hopper now that would change the eligibility date. now the congressional pension vests at five years. my bill would increase that to

12 years. not one co-sponsor. now, term limits subject to interpretation. some favor it, some abhor it. i think a good argument could be made that we have term limits now, if you want to vote, you have a right to do that. if you don't, that's you exercising term limits. >> but aren't there a lot of built-in advantages for incumbents? >> oh, i think that's why the folks back home don't like it because it's obvious that -- it's ultimately highly favored on the one hand, crumbs on the table from the other.

to this day folks complain to me about congressional pension, how i may be the only one who has refused the pension and the thrift plan. we have two pension routes, called the thrift plan and the pension. not my most brilliant financial decision, i might add. >> you're a life-long bachelor. >> yeah. >> why is that? >> i told a girl i was dating one time, she asked me that, i said i've never had time. normally that would be a bachelor cop-out but knowing me that's probably the truth. i've dated girls i liked more than they liked me and conversely, dated girls that liked me more than i liked them but it never did play out. >> why retire today? why are you retiring? >> i've got a bad back. i got skin cancer.

neither of which is imminently failing my health but with eight new counties and a total of 10 counties in all, with a bum back, a lot of these folks don't know me as opposed to the old district. i just felt like it might be a good time to walk away. >> where are you going? what are you going to do? >> someone asked me that the other day and i said i hasn't thought about it. he said, hadn't thought about it? he said you've had 30 years of no spare time, you're going to be in a position where you have nothing but spare time, you better be thinking about it. i won't fail retirement. i'll try to stay active. but colleagues that i've met up here, democrats and republicans alike, they are very endearing to me. and i apologize, peter, to you

and your staff. i'm coming down with my annual late summer, early autumn cold as you can tell with the raspy voice. >> what are you going to miss most about capitol hill? >> tomorrow i'm scheduled to go meet with the judicial conference at the supreme court. meeting with them periodically. infrequently but periodically. i'll miss meeting with them. i will not miss my weekly trek to the airport. i recall, peter, some months ago, actually it's been years ago now, i was being driven to the airport by one of our staffers, for rural randolph county.

95-degree day and you can see the sun is my enemy. 95-degree day. bumper-to-bumper traffic. i said to her, i wouldn't live in this town. she said you do live in this town but you don't think of this town as being home. but that aside, it is still recognized as the cradle of democracy, the cradle of freedom, the cradle of liberty, and i'm proud, when i look out that window and see the capitol, if i'm griping and complaining, it pretty well falls in line this is the best place to be. >> you heading back to the district after january? >> oh, yeah. i feel sure i will be. >> where will you keep your papers and your office records? >> university of north carolina at greensboro. >> why there? >> my alma mater, guilford college, did not have an adequate library that could handle it and u.n.c.g. has an appropriate library and they expressed interest in it so that's where they'll be. >> who are you going to miss here? >> well, i'm going to miss -- i have been richly blessed with a good staff, peter. so i'll miss my staffers. i'll miss my colleagues. both sides of the aisle. but i really am indebted to a

good staff. i tried to treat them right. they, in turn, treat me right. >> you've had long-term staff, haven't you? >> attrition has not been a problem with us. people come and they stay. which, of course, affords reliability, affords uppermost confidence, without walking back and forth, in and out the door one day, one day here, one day gone. >> any regrets? >> maybe should have taken the congressional pension. \[laughter] i say that halfway in just. >> congressman howard coble, after 30 years, retiring from congress. thanks for your time. >> thank you, peter. >> c-span's interviews with

retiring members continues wednesday. here is a look. >> i've been a member of congress for 34 years. i was a manager for a baseball of folk all team, i had -- i would be in the hall of fame. it doesn't bother me. it wasn't just that ongoing. i had 18 cochairmen in my district that were supporting me and wanted me to run. -- betterr judgment judgment. it is hard to get elected if you are 90 or 91 years old. there's a difference. that never was brought up. >> all 90-year-olds are not

built the same in other worse. -- in other words. what is your secret? you have a bull calf, lift them over the fence. until it day after day is a full-grown bull. when you can still left them over the fence, you can run for congress. that is how i got in the race for congress. wednesday, c-span interviews retiring congressional members at a pm eastern on c-span. -- 8 p.m. eastern on c-span.

retiringiews from members of congress. watch the interviews at 8 p.m. eastern. >> as much as we have accomplished, i didn't want to look back at that as much as to look forward in the next couple of months. there are a couple of things i would like to do. to get my defense authorization bill passed. this is a major effort involving large amounts of staff. i also want to finish up work on investigations looking at some gimmick that are used to avoid taxes. >> i've been a member of congress for 34 years. i had a 34 and one. i'd be in the hall of fame. it doesn't bother me. had 18t just -- i

cochairmen that were supporting me and wanted me to run. thanksgivingrsday, day, and american history to work at various native american tribes at 10 a.m. eastern "washington journal following -- following "washington journal ." and supreme court justices thomas, alito, and sotomayor. thanksgiving week on c-span. for a complete schedule, go to c-span.org. next on c-span, a look at alternative ways to improve education. the remarks by attorney general eric holder on the investigation of the shooting of michael brown in ferguson, ms. every. -- missouri.

>> on the next "washington david strickland talks about safety precautions for the thanksgiving holiday. then data collection practices. ofer, the availability mental health care. "washington journal" begins at 7 a.m. eastern on c-span. here are a few of the comments we recently received from viewers. >> i just have to tell you to see these people in person to hear them have the panel discussion or congressional toring is so important

understand the context and to listen to the statement in its entirety. tv is they think look greatest program on tv. i like how the authors take the time for summaries what they write and the moderator does a great job of stimulating the conversation. .t is what i look forward to iwatch c-span all the time when i'm home. i have on station most of the time. i think it is excellent. i watch all of these debates around the country. enqueue for the book talks in

the history -- thank you for the book talks and the history. i teach at a community college in connecticut. thank you very much. >> continue to let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. all us, e-mail us, or send us tweet. conversation.n like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. ,> next from chicago ideas week a group of education researchers from around the country discuss the future of education and alternatives to traditional teaching. this is 90 minutes. >> thank you.

that is so cool to say here it i will say it back to me. [shouts] >> wasn't that fun? think of all the songs that were written about the end of school. i think this is aptly named the end of school. i think about a building that contains all the information, all the knowledge. the end of school, you have to

go and get all the information to go somewhere else to the idea of education and leading oneself out. there was a gentleman here this week who was featured in our future global leader summit yesterday. his name is emerson sparks. what is interesting, maybe even phenomenal is his path to education. 12 yearshe was only old when he convinced his parents that he should be allowed to drop out of school. can say. go ahead. he was not asking his parents to ditches education. he simply felt he could educate better than what he was getting it traditional school.

he studied successful people and what made them so and utilized a wealth of online resources. begany 12 my he mugglenet.com. a harry potter fansite that gave 50 million page views every month and caught the eye of the author, j.k. rowling. -- he forecast7 websites with a 90% success rate. and crain's 40 under 40. leaving school before puberty is not exactly what this talk is what emerson's story

shows is the potential not only for learning, but extremely successful learning beyond the walls of the classroom. heard and all andrienced online courses may be received an online certificate or degree. now, parents and children have resources to complete grades k-12 through online self-guided curriculum. what? school every as we know it? it is definitely going through a transformation. that is what we're going to explore today. transformation. i take you to my first day of

class. i have all my students pick an element and that is what they would be for the whole semester. if you were iron i would call to effie. i would ask my students if they want to be solid, liquid, or gas. the cool kids are like solid and some of the girls would be like liquid. and the geeks who were thinking where she going with this would gas. my imagine you are 17 and you declare to your colleagues that you want to be a gas. you will hear from -- here some sounds. thediately i separate class. solids, you sit in the front row. your molecules are packed tightly and you will not move. sometimes i would talk to them as if they were not as smart as

anybody else because they were solid. i would rope off the section of the classroom and say your molecules are little more spread out but you will always take the shape of your container. gas, the molecules were all spread out and they had all the freedom in the world. every 17 year old want more than anything? freedom. the end of school. so i would say them a all right. if i left the door open, they could leave. they had everything. immediately, the solids would be like, that is not fair. and i would say you have to change your state of matter or we begin to change our state of mind. our journey together is going to be about how to get those freedoms that we want. kids did great. we had a lot of fun and they scored very well on their test.

and every day, another student of mine would come back and take me out to lunch. it was my free lunch law. and so, the question was, what are you doing with your science? what is your truth. science is the study of truth. probably one of the brightest kids ever worked with came to see me one day. i said, what are you doing with your science? he said i'm working with chemicals. >> i got all excited. i am working with cleaning services and you would be surprised about what people do not know about the basic properties of ammonia. i felt my heart break. was billion. probably the smartest student i ever worked with. he could have figured out coldfusion and he was basically telling me he was leaning toilets. and i knew something had to change. i wear my heart on my sleeve.

he could see. you have always taught us that leadership is making opportunities for others. matter whether i am a lab coat or a lecture hall, i am teaching and that is what you told us to do. -- on the wayo back to my office, i knew this was a defining moment in my life. work to thend night same organization. and we got our heads together and we said we have to change this. we loved technology because it is creative, doesn't matter what you look like, it is a meritocracy. by teaching programming, we could write the rules. also 1998. they were dot-coms popping up everywhere. there was a tremendous opportunity. but the really cool thing was that there is a core set of skills that sit between technology and leadership that we could teach so that folks

could not only get great jobs in i.t., they can also apply those skills to the communities we come from. agents ind be change our businesses, building systems and things that would change the nature of business, but we could also be agents of change in our communities. embassies, and reciprocity, and resiliency, and all the things that inner-city kids are already faced with. building and developing in their life by overcoming adversity. so that was that. that was the moment. 15 years later, we have a 90% placement rate for our graduates and the average earning increases over 300%. 27 of our alums are homeowners and 75% are actively engaged in their community as leaders. [applause] thank you.

so just a little piece about the power of education and transformation. and thinking about how do we lead change. i want to introduce our next speaker and i ask you this question, what did education look like when there were no classrooms? no core curriculum, no textbooks create no nothing. our next speaker can tell us. he is a strong advocate of the principle of evolutionary psychology or a belief that we will teach ourselves what we need to survive. and thrive. evolutionary develop mental psychologist at boston college, where he researches and teaches comparative evolutionary develop mental and educational psychology. he is the author of the money 13 book emma free to learn. why unleashing the instinct to play will make our children happier, more self-reliant, and better students for life.

please join me in welcoming dr. peter gray. >> thank you. what a pleasure to be here. what a great topic. the end of school, yea. am an evolutionary psychologist and what that means is that i am interested in human nature. i am interested in how that nature came about by pilots full evolution can't five natural selection. and particularly interested in the nature of human children and most particularly in that aspect , those aspects of children's becomethat lead them to educated. so the idea that i will about business. that children are biologically

to educate themselves. they do it joyfully through play, questioning, and! we do not need to educate children already have is to provide the conditions that would allow them to educate themselves. the basic instincts of town. playfulness, their curiosity, you a sociability acted on by natural selection and server function of education. but we take those abilities away when we put them in school and prevent them from educating themselves. my argument is that if we provide the conditions that children need to educate themselves, we really can do away with schools as we know them. [applause] some of them might be -- some of you might be thinking that i am crazy. our of you who are kindly

thinking i am a hopeless idealist. but i assure you i am neither. i am a hardheaded realist. i have done a great deal of research on this topic. the idea that i am talking about greatis supported by a deal of empirical observation and research which is elaborated which imy book about have a few minutes to try to convince you is worth thinking about. want to think about this idea is by looking at hunter gatherer cultures. we were all hunter gatherers until relatively recently in history, from a biological point of view. some people in certain isolated parts of the world have survived this into modern times. at the apologists have found the man studied their cultures. a few years ago, a graduate

student of mine and i conducted a survey of 10 different anthropologists who had studied seven different hunter gatherer cultures among them on three continents. we asked about how children became educated in that culture. one of our question was how much time do in the culture you observe have to play and explore on their own and the answer that single one ofery these anthropologists was all the time. the children and even the teenagers are free to play and explore in age mixed groups away from adults all day long. the processnd in they become educated. another question we asked was how do they play, what are the forms of their play and what we found from that from these anthropologists was that they play at the very activities that and areessed to learn

most important to learn for success in their culture. so they play at hunting and gathering and finding roots and digging them up. a play at building things like huts and bows and arrows. they play at the music and dance and art of their culture. they play at those things that they have to learn to become educated. the anthropologists also told us and i have seen it in writing many times that they have never seen brighter, happier, more resilient, more self-reliant children than the hunter that theyhildren observed. the question was, could this work in our culture? think ofyou might course it can. there are things that we have to learn that hunter gatherer children do not have to learn like reading, writing, and arithmetic. moreover, it is not so easy for children in our culture to be exposed naturally told the skills and knowledge that is

important to the culture. i might think it would not work except for the fact that for many years, i have been an observer and researcher at the school in framingham, massachusetts. this will was founded in 1968 so it has been in the -- in existence for almost half a century. it has 150 students at any given time. age four on through about 18. it has eight staff members, adult staff members who operate on a budget that is half of what the local public schools cost and it excepts essentially all students who apply. this is not believe education. this is eminently affordable. thisnique things about school are the way it is administered and educational philosophy of the school. school operates as a

participatory democracy. all the school rules are made by where each student and staff member has a vote. and they are enforced by a judicial committee which is modeled after the jury system of our larger culture. at any given time, there is one little kid, more -- one middle sized kid, a couple of teenagers, and one staff member on the judicial committee. whether it is a staff member or student violates the rules, they brought up before the judicial committee which makes a decision about guilt or innocence and what the punishment might be if found guilty. that is the way the school operates. the educational philosophy, it is essentially the same as that of a hunter gatherer band. the school offers no curriculum. no tests. no grades, no substitutes for

grades, it expects children to decide themselves what they want to learn, how they want to learn, what they want to do. if you were to go through the school at any given time of day, you might see scenes such as on the slide. you would see children in the various kinds of art projects. you might find somebody cooking in the kitchen. you would always find some people in the computer lab. you might find somebody in the photo lab. you might find children building with blocks in the children's playroom. children playing music in one of the music practice rooms. kids drying playfully at a blackboard. young people playing a game such as chess. peoples, you might find playing down by the brook or climbing boulders are fishing in the pond are playing a game on the athletic field or strumming a guitar and talking and

singing. in the winter you, you might find people building a snowman or skating on the pond the fist and then the fall. you might also see them playing in more traditional playgrounds. learning at the school is age mixing. the children are not segregated by age. the older children are naturally drawn to the little kids and the little kids are naturally drawn to the big kids. whatittle children observe the older ones can do and they want to do that. they want to be able to read if they see older ones read. they want to climb trees. the older children are constantly scaffolding the behavior of the younger ones. bringing them up to higher levels of performance. many children at this school learn to read because they played games that involved

reading with kids who know how to read and the kids who know how to read more or less teach them to read. not because they're trying to teach them to read but they almost need to do so to play the game. i should say can we just go back. i should say that the advantage of age mixing also goes the other way. are learningldren to care and be nurturant, to be leaders and they are being continuously inspired by the creativity and the energy of the unger once so the age mixing is as valuable for the older kids as for the younger ones. the best evidence that this works comes from follow-up studies to the graduates. quite a number of years ago, i along with a colleague conducted one such study. we found essentially all of the people that graduated from that school, almost all of them agreed to be in the study and we

found that they were doing very well out there in the world. they had no problems in higher education if they chose to go that way and they were in a wide variety of careers. they were very satisfied with their lives. many of them were pursuing him careers that were direct and extensions of childhood play. for example, one of the graduates was a machinist and an inventor. there was another that loved both who was now captain of the cruise ship. there was another who was fascinated by computers who developed his own software company. there was another who loved making golf clubs who is now a pattern maker in the high him pattern maker in the high fashion industry. people who have time to really pursue what they like to play

could find ways of making a living at that. they are doing what they are interested in doing. a couple of other studious -- studies have been published as books. they came to essentially the same conclusion as we did. the model is replicable. mostly in this country, some in other countries. one of the closest to hear is the tall grass sudbury school. it doesn't seem to depend on socioeconomic class. it doesn't seem to depend on the particulars of the students personality. now here i want to describe the conditions that i think are common to the hunter gatherer band and optimizing children's abilities to educate themselves.

the first condition is a clear understanding that education is the child's responsibility. when children know that they are responsible for their education, they take that responsibility. they are led to believe that somebody else's responsible for their education and all they have to do is do what they are told. they tend to do that in a minimal way and don't take responsibility for their education. unlimited opportunity to play, explore, and pursue their own interest. unlimited time. it takes time to try out different things.

it takes time to get bored and overcome boredom and find your passion. it takes unlimited amount of time. opportunity to play with the tools of the culture. those would be bows and arrows and knives and fire and digging sticks. they love to play with computers. they know this is the tool of the culture and they need to spend a lot of time with it so it becomes an extension of their own body.

access to a variety of caring adults that are helpers. how important that last part is. the last person you want to go to to help you learn something is somebody who is evaluating you. you are nervous about that person. you go with more of a frame of mind of trying to impress that person with how much you know and not to say that i don't know this and i like some help. by not judging the children, the staff members are much more able to be helpers to the children than teachers in a typical school could be. free age mixing. that is absolutely key to the school. the school would not work if it were children all the same age because children don't have much to learn from others who are the same age. they learn from children who are older and children that are younger than themselves.

immersion in a stable, moral, democratic community. the hunter gatherer band are in their own different ways, democratic communities. they are communities in which every child knows that their ideas and their actions influence the others involved in the community. so they are growing up in a setting where they feel responsible not just for themselves but for the community within which they are developing. and that is an extraordinarily important aspect of education and one which is almost completely ignored in our regular schools. what i want you to notice is that none of these conditions exist in standard schools. it's as if we deliberately take away from children everything that they need to educate

himself when we put them in school and we tried very inefficiently and very and effectively to educate them. so i'm going to conclude this way. i am absolutely sure that some day, people are going to look back at us now and they are going to say, what were those people thinking? why on earth did they ever believe that coercion is essential for education? believing that you have to force people to eat or force people to breathe. why on earth did they ever think that standardization such that people regardless of their interests or predilections should all learn the same thing in the same way?

be tested by the same test? what kind of crazy idea is that. i am sure we will reach the day where people will look back and say that. i hope we reach that day sooner rather than later. i would like to see it come in my lifetime. i hope that some of you or maybe all of you will play a role in bringing that about before too long. and with that, i thank you for your kind attention. i thank you for being here. [applause] and bless you all. >> let's have another round of applause. wasn't that so cool? all right, our next speaker has dedicated his career into taking the ideas we just heard about

into action. he is known for his outlandish and on spiraling educational tactics that utilize what is right in our own backyards to teach kids some pretty high powerful stuff. he is a do-it-yourself neuroscientist and the founder of backyard brains, an organization that develops to help kids discover neuroscience and how the brain works. the subjects of these experiments? let's just put it this way. warning, live cockroaches will be used in the following demonstration. let's bring him out. [applause]

>> hello, chicago. it's good to be here. i'm from michigan so i always love giving talks. it you guys are good people so i'm excited about this. i am a neuroscientist. it this talk will be about and are a science and exciting changes happening in the education system. the democratization of science. they now allow us to build at low cost, tools that used to only be done in a lab. what we are going to learn about today is that this change is happening and we are seeing it happen making citizen scientists out of us. the history of what it used to be to be a neuroscientist. this is a brain that i studied and i had to go to a graduate school, spending six years in a research lab getting a phd just to get access to the tools to

understand how the brain works. that seems a bit silly. one out of five of us is going to have a neurological disorder. we have no cures for these diseases yet. i dedicate my life to study the brain just to be able to understand how the brain works. for example, if you want to learn astronomy, you don't have to go to your phd. it you can buy a cheap telescope and understand a bit how the planets move. the point is, you can sit there and maybe you become interested. but with biological sciences, there is nothing like that.

there's no cheap telescope for the brain to be able to allow you to get access to the same tools the professionals do. i worked with my lab mates and we would try to change that and come up with kits to work with kids. we would have a papier-mache frankenstein and put ice cream in his brain. we would transfer that to another student and the student would take out the visual cortex back here and the student what all of a sudden have blinders on and could not see for the last -- rest of the class. we would pinch his arms down. it was really so different. it was so abstract. one of our lab mates decided to come up with an idea. we published an abstract and we

called it be hundred dollars bike. we wanted to take the lab equipment and make it affordable and easy enough. we would be able to record the same ron's in a very simple way. this is really kind of a shoddy stage. it didn't even work but there was so much interest from scientists. we kept getting e-mails about this thing, when can we buy one? we started with our prototype and we kept working on it until finally we have a version that actually works.

the spyker boxx allows it to record living brain cells. we will do that today and we will use not a high-tech computer but students phones to be able to record been earl activity and analyze that as well. before i go into the experiment, let's do a brief recall on what neuroscience is and what the brain is and what neurons are. not many people. this is why we need to do neuroscience earlier. no one even really knows what the basic cells are.

this is a neuron and a long axon that reaches out. this is where information gets passed from one to the other. the information comes in the form of electricity and it comes from one cell to the other cell and you do this enough times and that's how we are able to see and we are able to think. electricity comes in small packets and they are opening up really quickly and allows your brain to function. are you guys ready? let's hear you. thank you. as we said earlier, we are not going to use my brain and i'm not going to invite some appear to drill into your head. i'm going to use the brains of south american cockroaches which allow us -- whoops. the first thing i'm going to do

is pull out these cockroaches. oh, disaster. you've got this? what i'm going to do first is i'm going to anesthetize him. there are no tricks here. this guy is alive. does anyone know why we are doing this? are they warm-blooded? cold-blooded. that means they become the same temperature of ice water. those potassium channels stop moving. he stops feeling pain as well. i am knocking him out because we are going to do a surgery right

now and i will remove one of his legs so that we can record the neurons inside the legs. i'm going to take this guy out and i'm going to cut one of his legs off right there. gross. let me go back to the slides really quick. this is the leg of the cockroach. the beautiful hairs, they allow him to do something interesting. the neuron will send electrical messages up to the brain. the brain doesn't know that. it will try to get information to the brain. those neurons will start firing again and we should be able to listen to how the brain actually functions. i am going to take the leg and put a couple of pins on the leg. positive and negative. you need to points for

electricity. we don't think there are neurons. i will put one into the femur where i do think there are neurons. can you see that so far? i will turn on the speaker and we will listen to what the brain sounds like. [static sounds] can everyone here that? people say it either sounds like raindrops or frying bacon. that is how your brain sounds. if i put a wire to your brain, you would hear the same sounds. the beauty of nature, these are concerns. i will turn on this ipad here that i've plugged in.

we will hopefully see that as well. now what we are looking at here, you can see those spikes that are going by. those are the messages being sent from the leg to the brain. so what would happen if i were to touch that leg? maybe it sends a message. i will go ahead and touch the leg. you see that? what you're looking at is information. it's being encoded and being sent to the brain. this would be the same if i wanted to touch the shoulder. he feels that because there is in or on there. this is how everything works from the sensory input into the brain.

let's go back to slides really quick. we'll come back and do more experiments. when people first see the spikes for the first time, these are not doctored photos. this is a wonderful thing. it is portable so we can get citizens involved. we can show spikes on a plane and as you get people to sit down, we can make kids understand it and give them the schematics. and not only that, what each of the knobs do. they develop their own experiments and we developed some online. i just want to do one more quick experiment. the brain not only takes an information but it sends it back out to the muscles. instead of my brain, i'm going to send information coming out rum my cell phone and i'm going to play some hip-hop music which

has electricity similar to the electricity in the brain into this leg and we see what happens when we send a little jolt of electricity inside this cockroach leg. very similar to an experiment galvani did many years ago. can you zoom in on that? let me turn it this way. what you are seeing is the cockroach leg, when the base frequency is playing, you will see a little twitching of the leg. i just want to jump to one more video. what we are going to do now is i will show you what happens if you do this within -- this is the galvani experiment.

this is a squid that you can catch off the shores of maine, of boston. i've done the same experiment here but inside the brain of a squid. it sends information down to the skin to change the colors. we will listen what happens when you play hip-hop music into a squid. i am looking down on it and hopefully have some audio here. so what this is, these are the cells inside the squid that open and close like tiny muscles. the cephalopods change their color on demand. we have put a little bit of electricity there. you can actually do this pretty well.

so let's go to the next thing. i want to record the neurons from people through these muscular activities. can i get one volunteer from the audience? yes, what your name? perfect. all right. the first thing i want to do is hook you up and get one more volunteer. what we're going to do is i'm going to record the electrical activity and amplify it and stick it into someone else's arm.

we are going to record your brain, amplify it, and control another brain. do we have a volunteer that would be willing to give it up? come on down. let's hook you up really quick. are you ready for this? i will put a couple of pads on you. i'm going to put an electrode. this is saltwater which is on a lot of the sodium and potassium that connect to the metal. and in what i'm going to do is i'm going to hook you up to hear and put this one here. >> do you know each other? >> no. >> we are going to have you do something. i want you to squeeze your hand. i want you to squeeze up like you are revving a motorcycle. now what we have here is we have amplified your electricity and we're going to turn on the led.

when the red led comes on, we have amplified the electricity enough that we can make your our move. nish, let's do your left hand as well. you have a nerve that runs down here, the funnybone. i'm going to try to hit this so that when she moves her arm -- what you're hearing is her motor cortex. we will stick it into your arm and make a brain computer interface to a brain brain interface house that? i've got you hooked in and we are almost done here. you're going to feel a little bit of pinching.

an electrical charge will hit that nerve and you should be able to feel these things. you have completely lost your free will of that left arm and you are now completely in control of his left arm. let's try it. i will turn it up a little bit. when you move, go ahead. that we will do a really quick experiment. you look the other way. if i were to move your arm -- why is that? it has to be your brain sending it down to match your muscles. that is the last experiment right now. you can have a seat.

will we are trying to do is make them available. including antarctica. we are going to be on the eighth continent. we have an agreement with nasa to send ourselves into space. i want to thank you all for your time. thank you. >> that is so cool. neuro. me at

that was -- the cockroach is still in there. in keeping with the theme of education outside of school walls, it is my honor to introduce you to the next speaker. what risk would you take to change your life? change your world or your community for the better? this is the question the next speaker challenged himself to answer. instead of attending a traditional grad school for an mba. this transforms the way you think.

>> i have been given 12 minutes so we will dive right in. a blank page and a problem. for most of my life even though i was seven years old, i was supposed to become and engineer. it has limitations meeting you have to go through a lot of schooling and that means you have to be incredibly smart.

i do not know how smart i was create my mother wanted me to be a nurse scientist. if she saw that, she would have elbowed me the whole time. in middle school, i came across some incredible mentors and teachers and friends. during some hard times in my family. these guys became my heroes. i want to be like them so i brought my parents in the same room one day and told them ok, sorry. i told them i wasn't be going -- going to become a doctor or engineer. i was going to work with middle school and high school students. at which point they said why can't you do both? which is a valid point when i looked back. with middle school and high school students in the suburbs of chicago where i found myself helping build a 40,000 space called the hub.

it was an afterschool space for middle school and high school students to do some of the work he mentors and teachers had done with me but as i was building that space, i fell in love with this idea of the social enterprise. building businesses and organizations that were for-profit or for purpose. the common answer is i will get an nba. there were several great schools here, two of the top five or 10 schools in the country. i started down that track. the more i looked at the style of learning, i did not know if it hit me. -- if it fit me. i didn't want to get into so much debt that i couldn't navigate what i did afterwards. i thought if i could start from scratch, how could i design my education. i started a blog and a

newsletter. i invited a couple hundred people to subscribe at $10 a month. i know what you're thinking, you got people to give you money? i convinced them that i would pull off 12 projects. it was from design, business, and social change. myould take my papers, monthly learning censure those with them, where i was and where i was going, and i would also make collections along the way. it happened to be a leap year and i designed my own masters. it led me across the world. i went from a start up in china to a farm in costa rica led by rocket scientist who were trying to teach people the inns and outs of organic farming. i found myself in a digital agency.

i ended up serving thanksgiving dinner in downtown l.a., learning the ins and outs of a massive organization that was serving the poor. this did two things for me. one was it put me in a position where i was slightly alone. ok? designing your own education, you are a little bit of a vagabond and a little bit of a vigilante. what are you? you travel out -- travel around and i would talk to these companies and i would say, can you give me a month? give me a few days to solve a to solve a problem in your space. i would scope a project and find something that i could solve and at the end of that month, share that with that company. over and over, that's what happened. interview, pitch them on an idea.

and solve the problem. it was not changing the whole company. it was scoping this thing. along the way, i was finding people wanting to create risk to make change. it was finding these people that were thinking about could i adapt and start a business this year? and so those people started sending me their stories. at the end of the year, -- the beginning of the year, if you guys share your stories, i will compile it to an end of the year project that would be my version of dissertation. that is what we did. we designed a book of stories of all these people who were taking the risks to learned and returning that risk. it became the theme of the leap year project. and finally i had to figure out how to design my on graduation. i had a community now, a dissertation.

i put a cap and gown on and on this very stage. it was 18 months ago. my parents sat right there. my dad was elated. he introduced himself to everyone as the father of the leap year guy. awesome. the question came, how might we establish experience as a credible form of education. it is transformative. i did not and in debt. would beof cases i compensated for some of my work. i learned a great amount of practical tools. they had to be a way to replicate things. we started the institute. students, instead of doing 12 experiences in 12 months which is kind of the everest of the program.

we would do three experiences with 10 to 12 weeks and we would have classes peppered him throughout. started in chicago in september for two weeks and we would create, we would find a small group of students. the first founding five, they joined us in september and they joined us in chicago to learn five competencies. self-awareness, community building, human centered design and human centered design and community building. and storytelling. out howt to also figure , do we redesign all aspects of higher education? we did not have a massive campus. which is if you look up a university, the first thing you see is all these images of beautiful campuses. we did not necessarily have full-time instructors so that -- what does that look like?

for campuses, we thought about countless office spaces with extra space. they be we could meet with them. companies started giving us or meet in their spaces. space. for those quarterly meetup's. and the idea of instructors, we started meeting with people who were practitioners and ask them to give us two days of their time to teach us one of those five core competencies. we teamed up with a hostile here hostel here. it was kind of turning into a mix of harvard meets the amazing race. stanford was in the middle of doing a project where they were dissecting for cart -- for parts of higher education. rather than five. the library, accreditation, and experiential learning.

we asked to be one of the partners. just last may, the final presentation called stanford 2025 where we were able to share some of the findings after a year of studies with them. myself, andg class, several amazing people from stanford. and if you haven't gotten to check that out, a super awesome project. and of course there was the actual experience. this is the quick telling of what she did. ♪ >> when i started my year of experiences, i knew i wanted to become a better designer. i know that they are communicated. i want to get better. at developing and experiencing ideas. i began working as a project

manager for dojo. a web design agency. for the first time, i communicated with them throughout the entire design process. after gaining experience as the project lead i felt confident to , take on my next team in seattle. i was in studio a studio. seven with the architecture firm. i was able to design experiences for civic and corporate projects. for my last term, i was in the department of design for arts education campaign. i then joined the architecture firm and curmudgeon group on a public storytelling art installation. together, we worked on all aspects of the project for designing the physical form. my undergraduate degree is an architecture and music. when considering careers, i thought it would have to limit myself to one or the other.

i got to work on projects that let me exercise everything. it will help me design in every medium. rather, i can show how those skills make me a better designer for teammates. >> and giving me creative confidence going ahead. i say, don't study it. experience it. [applause] >> right? may have been things like creative confidence, creative agency.

creative output, to have a real world portfolio, a book of work, impact. so seeing not only what they're but to do for companies what they're able to do within higher education as they continue sharing this idea of designing education through experience. of last year, which was actually last month, september, they designed their as well where they shared four discoveries. and they were able to tell their stories and their learning, they teamed up with an architecture firm here in chicago, and they the also able to welcome next class of students. and were able to hand them their on the first day, it's a piece of wood two the logo cut out and after each experience their given a token that fills atthe diploma and then goings they get the pen can't