and i would argue democracy has improved upon itself in an industrial society. where at that inflection point today between the industrial economy and may be an information economy. that creates an amazing opportunity to not just survive as a democracy but to create a more perfect union. >> i believe the cyber security agenda in general, this is super important. it needs to be pushed. the reason is that cyber security is not the problem that you deal with in technology and it will be gone. it is a problem that's here to stay. >> watch the communicators tonight on 8:00 p.m. eastern. ♪ >> this week on q&a, senior

fellow thomas soul who recently ended his syndicated column which he had for 25 years and he talks about his life and career and his love of photography. dr. thomas sowell, you wrote this at the end of 2016, age 86 is well past the usual retirement age. the question is why i kept at it so long. why did you? >> there's a lot of things i thought should be explained in a different way. i enjoyed doing it and hearing back from people. i have your last column.

>> we had cold water which many other black families do not have. it says were a came from. >> you moved to harlem. >> i live with family and some

members who were in new york but fortunately, they ran into a boy he named eddie who was quite unusual for those days. he came from a highly educated family was obviously very cultured. before i ever arrived in new york, they had decided this was someone i needed to meet. if this could help me in life. he could tell me things that they did not have the education to tell me. at the time, i myself by any means was not looking that way, but thank heavens, others were. >> where was eddie today and what did he do in his life. >> ironically, i received a card from him on my birthday. he's a year older than i am. he went on to become one of the deans of the colleges. he's now retired living in a very nice area, so it was quite

a pleasant surprise. but my life really could have been very different had i not been introduced to him, and i would never have been introduced to him except members of my family were older and saw immediately that this was someone who could be helpful to me. he and i never lived within a quarter mile of each other, and he was a year older, so i would never have been in the same class with him in school, but he was able to tell me things that i didn't know, for example, he took me to a public library for the first time in my life and at the time, i didn't know what a public library was and i didn't have the money to buy one of them. -- i was dubious when i saw those books and i didn't have the money to buy one of them. and he patiently explained it all to me, and somewhat reluctantly, took out a library card and bought a couple of books.

-- and borrow a couple of books. and that was important to me because i had began to acquire the habit of reading on my own, years before i ever would have acquired it in the normal course of events. >> what kind of books were you interested in in those early days? >> oh, heavens. i remember reading the children's editions of dr. doolittle, alice and wonderland, things like that, but i got into the habit of reading. other kids in the same neighborhood where i grew up, odds were against meeting someone like that, as they were for me, except others saw the significance of introducing it. >> how long did you live in harlem? >> until 19 --oh, i was 20 years old the first time i moved out of harlem, and then i came back for a couple of years. so i grew up there from the age of 9 years old.

>> besides eddie, what impact did harlem and your family experience have on you other than the library? >> oh, i think a tremendous effect. i didn't realize it at the time. for example, when i was much older, and had a son of my own, like most first-time parents, i wanted to know when he was supposed to do these various things so i asked one of the surviving members of the family: how old was i when i first began to walk? and she said, oh, tommy, nobody knows when you could walk. somebody was always carrying you. i was raised as an only child in a family of four adults. when i got to be too much for one of them, she could always hand me off to somebody else. and i remember one episode in particular that was recounted many times in many years, that a

member of the family took me to a movie, and everything went fine. it was in a different part of town. it was only when we got back and i saw the house where we lived, i picked up some rocks and started throwing them at birdie. i must have 4 years old at the most. and later on, she would tell that story and just laugh, you know, i was a little angel until i got back there. and in much later years i thought, you know, you could take that attitude when there's one child and four adults. if it's the other way around, one mother and four children, it wouldn't have been nearly as funny. >> you know, we talked about, and you always mentioned that you liked to think things through before you write a book or a column and you're not in any hurry to have it published. how about this final column. how long did you think that through and what kind of message

did you leave at the end? mr. sowell: i had two final ones. i don't think i took any longer than the other ones. i had thoughts of not renewing my contract in previous years, but my wife always told me, you know, at the very least, you can blow off steam when things happened in the world that you don't like. but at this particular time, i was taking pictures at yosemite with buddies of mine for four days and i had not watched a television program or read a newspaper. and i thought this was the way to live. only way to live this way was to stop writing the column so i don't have to be up-to-date on all the news and that's the biggest benefit. when i'm watching a television program and silly programs come

on the air, i can switch the program or turner classics, i can turn it off because i feel no obligation to keep track of things like that and those things certainly don't do my blood pressure any good. mr. lamb: i know sitting on the stanford campus in palo alto, do you remember having your first political thought or idea? mr. sowell: oh, heavens, yes. i was 10 years old. it wasn't really my idea but i had heard that one was for the -- that wilkie was for the rich and fdr was the poor. i went around tearing down wilke posters in harlem. fortunately, there wasn't very many so i didn't waste much time on that.

mr.sowell: did you consider yourself a democrat? mr. sowell: i was a registered democrat in the spring of 1972 for the last time and since then, i've never been a registered member of any party and at that particular time, i was so disgust wide both candidates i didn't vote at all and neither of those candidates seemed to be as bad in retrospect as the two candidates we had last year. mr. lamb: let me go back to the column and ask buthis paragraph. desk ask you about this paragraph. years of lying presidents. you're talking about could any president do anything like that today, meaning it was john f. kennedy you'd been writing about and the soviet union and the trust people had in the president but you say after years of lying, democrat richard nixon, lyndon johnson,

especially destroyed not only their own credibility, but the credibility which the office itself once conferred. why did you consider the johnson and nixon presidencies as lying presidencies? mr. sowell: nixon is obviously the easy one. he lied about watergate. but in retrospect, the fact that nixon was so obviously lying i regard as a virtue. when you saw him on television, the same things that turned out proved to be false, you could see him sweating and so forth. didn't take any great insight to know he was lying even before the evidence came out. with lyndon johnson, my josh, -- my gosh there were so many , things.

he got us into the gulf of tonkin resolution and it turned out to be something that was completely overblown in order to give him power to go to war. but at the crucial time in that war after the offensive in 1968, the media all said this was the uprising of communist guerrillas in vietnam in 1961, and would show that our policies failed and the commoners one. it so happened that later evidence including statements by communist leaders themselves after they had conquered vietnam, was that the americans had wiped out the guerrillas andviate kong. -- in south vietnam. there were never a serious force thereafter. but what came through the media was the viet kong guerrillas were succeeded against the americans and the war was unwinnable. if the public thinks the war is unwinnable, it will make it unwinnable and lyndon johnson came on the air, perhaps told the truth, a rare thing for him,

and yet he was not believed and all those in the media were putting forth what turned out to be completely false stories were believed and, therefore, all 50,000 americans who had lost their lives in vietnam, winning victory after victory, all of that went down the tube because the president didn't have credibility when he needed it. mr. lamb: what's been the impact of vietnam and watergate all of these years on the country? mr. sowell: no question, great cynicism by the public. if i may go back to kennedy in 1962 and the missile crisis. i was never a big fan of president kennedy, and he won very narrowly in 1960. but when he came on the air and told us that the russians were going to put nuclear missiles, 90 miles from the united states, and he was taking us to the

brink of nuclear war to stop them, i thought, you know, he's president. he's got to do what he's got to do. and it was a very tense time. i was teaching at the time and i remember i was giving out the assignment to the students in class, i said, you know, the assignments are next week and i have to bite my tongue to keep from saying there was a next week. there was that confidence and i don't recall anybody raising any fuss for this man for taking this step that could have been the death for millions, as he well knew. today, i don't think any president of the united states in the last 30-40 years, could go on the air and do that and have the public behind them. and that's not a problem for him. that's a problem for the country, if you have a president, he has to have the public support, not for his sake, but for the public's sake.

mr. lamb: do you remember how you felt about watergate in the middle of it all in. mr. sowell: yes. someone was trying to get me to accept a presidential appointment in the nixon administration and they asked me to tend --send in my vita. and i have to tell you, i'm very disturbed about what's coming out about watergate and at some point, i may find it necessary to criticize the president of the united states, and the guy at the white house said to me, tom, if we let that stop us, we never will get these jobs filled. send us your resume. mr. lamb: and what'd you do? mr. sowell: no, i decided i didn't want the job anyway. mr. lamb: while you're on that, we've got some video of you back in our talk in 2005, talking about an offer you had in the

ford administration. and as people listen to this, they have to keep in mind when you're telling the story that there was a democratic senate at that time. let's listen to this, and you'll see what you said back in 2005. [video clip] >> which president offered you the federal trade commissioner's job. mr. sowell: president ford. mr. lamb: what were the circumstances? mr. sowell: had a vacancy. it was 1976 when they offered it to me and i agreed to take it on condition if there was any opposition that arises, i don't have time to play washington games and i kept poll thering and asking and the guys at the white house, i don't hear anything, what's going on. oh, no, it's taking time and eventually, i was in washington so i went up to the hill and talked to a staffer, this committee that handled this, and he said, going over your record with a fine-toothed comb. we could find nothing to object

to, and therefore, we're not going to hold a hearing. this is an election year, and our guys will be elected and appoint our own man. and i said did you tell the white house this? said we told the white house this months ago. mr. lamb: and would you have taken that job had they cleared you in the senate? mr. sowell: you mean after learning this? mr. lamb: well, no. if the process had moved federal, had you agreed to go to the federal trade commission? mr. lamb: yes, i would have reluctantly --the first time it was offered to me, i said no, and in the meantime, someone i knew said, tom, you're always criticizing the federal trade commission. here's your chance to be a commissioner. i thought, i really should then. so i would have taken it. so it's not something i looked forward to.

it meant moving. it did not mean any increase in pay but it meant an increase in the cost of living so it downsized me personally. living up to what i was just saying, i would have are gone and tried it. mr. lamb: your first job in government though was considerably early than that, and what was it? mr. sowell: oh, i was a g s2 clerk in the general accounting office back in 1950, and that was a big step upward for me at the time. mr. lamb: that means that you were a g s2. they start at g s1 and go up to g s18. what did you do in the government and what impact did that have on your thinking today in. mr. sowell: you mean the years before or afterwards? mr. lamb: afterwards. after you'd had the experience of working in the government? mr. sowell: it was not habit forming. there was a lot of double dealing and stuff going on. but by the time --this is

before i was drafted and went into the marine corps. but after i came out, i went back eventually to that job and now, i realize i had the gi bill to back me up and i would now try to go to college. so i never regarded that as a career thing. it was just something i would do. and it gave me a great deal of freedom because for one thing, there was a great example of freedom. back in those days, the attorney general office had a unit that -- the general accounting office had a unit that was is essentially all black and it was presided over a white woman from georgia and they had different rules, another unit, if you were late, you signed a t for tardy, but in the unit that i was in, if you were late, they docked you an hour's annual leave, and you signed for it.

but i was planning to leave when the time was right and i was going to turn in my annual leave for money. i was not about to sign for that and i told them, quite frankly, not only was i not going to sign but if they took the leave without my signing, i would take my case up to the civil service commission. they immediately realized --they knew they were wrong to begin with but they realized if they did that, all hell would break loose and it was a political compromise. everybody else had to sign a t for tardy and i had to sign for political leave. -- i had to sign a t for tardy and they had to sign for political leave. i told the others, but many t didn't believe me, that i must have some secret in or know somebody. but that was the way it was. the other thing it was, the other people were career civil servants, so they knew not to make waves. i really didn't care because i didn't plan to be there that long.

mr. lamb: did you ever ask anybody why in the world they would have two separate ideas about why somebody was late, why they would do one with the whites and one with the black? mr. sowell: no. i think if you put a white woman from georgia in the 1950s in charge of a black unit, that's what you would expect to happen. mr. lamb: talking about your last words that you wrote at least in your columns for --was it creative services? mr. sowell: creative syndicate. mr. lamb: syndicate. you say the first column you wrote 30 years ago, at the end of '16, the first column i ever wrote, 39 years ago, was titled "the profits of doom. this was long before al gore made millions of dollars promoting global warming hysteria, back in 1970, the prevailing hysteria was the threat of a new ice age. i tried to find that column on

the internet. it's not there that i could find. is it available for any of us to read? mr. sowell: yes. it was published in the old "washington star" which as you know went out of business years ago, which i hope was not result of my column. there's a book called "pink and brown people" which is the first collection of my column that was published by the hoofer institution back in the early -- though hoover institution back in the early 1980s, and it's in there. whether it's still in print, i don't know. mr. lamb: when you wrote your last column, did you go back and read it? mr. sowell: i did not. but i remember it because it was not my first comment and i did -- because it was my first column and i did not know i would be writing it regularly. "the washington star" had a feature where ordinary readers could write in and send in a column and that was the first time i ever tried it and they published it as i wrote it, so

that was the beginning. mr. lamb: your undergraduate degree was from what school? mr. sowell: harvard. mr. lamb: you started at howard and then went to harvard? mr. sowell: that's right. mr. lamb: your masters degree was from columbia? mr. sowell: yes. mr. lamb: and your ph.d. at chicago. what was your dissertation about? mr. sowell: it was called hays law, a statistical analysis. i wrote it as a book published by princeton university press. mr. lamb: i got on amazon and counted the number of opportunities to buy something with your name on it, and i think i stopped at 57. but i know those are all kinds of things, including essays, but how many actual books have you completed since you started writing them? mr. sowell: oh, my goodness. i've been asked that question.

i've never actually counted them. partly because it depends on what you mean there, books that are original books. they're books that are collections of previous writings and so on and mono graphed and so forth. but i've never really tried to keep track but it's a few dozen. mr. lamb: at this point, which one of all of those books sold the most? mr. sowell: basic economics. not only sells the most but in english, and translated into seven or eight languages. mr. lamb: what would you say would be the most important thing or things that people who read that book will learn? mr. sowell: oh, my gosh. that is tough. i guess they'll learn what economics is all about, which is more than the sum of the topics, and in the first chapter i point out that economics really --i elaborate on a definition from the london school of economics.

economics is the study of scarce resources which have alternative uses. in other words, there was no economics in the garden of eden because everything was available in unlimited quantities. but i think in thinking generally, economics or otherwise, too many people do not begin by saying, what are the inherent constraints of the situation we're talking about, and they act as if they're god on the first day of creation and can follow whatever policy schemes for them that are best. when each of us enters the world, it is already completely elaborative and complex before we ever got here. so you make your decisions within that context. and if you don't think of it way, you can have all sorts of utopian notions. to give one example, from time to time, people complain, you know, that george washington,

thomas jefferson, condoned slavery. slavery was there for centuries before george washington and thomas jefferson was born and many people thought the office of the presidency had any power to do something about it. lincoln was able to do something about it. he did so not only as president but as commander in chief in a war and did it in war to people who were in rebellion against the united states. if you can't think in terms of the things confronting people who made decisions, nothing easier than this in a day to say oh, this should have been done, that should have have been done and that's not taking the past as it was. it's treating the past as if it's just a present, taking place in earlier times, and that is not the case. mr. lamb: when yale university took the name john calhoun off

one of their buildings, what was your reaction? mr. sowell: oh, my gosh, by this time, i had given up all hope for the academic world, and so practically nothing surprised me anymore. if we're going to, again, look retrospectively, whatever reason the name was put on there, it was there and i don't know anything that has happened since then that's made calhoun any better or worse than he was when that decision was made. if you're going to go back, first, you're so desperate for grievances that you have to go back into history to find them, that really says something. mr. lamb: we talked about the impact of vietnam and watergatee impact of vietnam and watergate on the country. mr. sowell: great in any number of ways.

it is irrevocable. the only thing we have any influence over our the present and the future. and nothing that we do -- i was so pained to learn that, apparently, angela merkel in germany felt a need to take in these refugees in order to help germany live down the terrible record of hitler. nothing is ever going to change did.hitler nothing. all you can do is do things that will have an effect on the president and the future and the effects of her policies in the present and the future has been disastrous. there's no reason to believe they're going to be less disastrous in the future. mr. lamb: i want to go back and look at video of you in 1987 testifying before the united states senate judiciary committee about robert bourque. it's about 30 seconds.

>> this may be the most important supreme court nomination of our time, not simply because the present court is so closely divided or even is the moste borque highly qualified nominee in this generation, but because this is an historic crossroads as regards to the expanding power of judges, which is to say the erosion of people's rights to govern themselves democratically. mr. lamb: why did you testify there and what impacted the rejection of robert bork have on the rest of the judiciary over the years? mr. sowell: i testified because the gross distortions that were coming out. i was listening to the congressional hearing through the day and i would hear how he was, the very least, racially opposedive or actually to civil rights and so forth. and then i would go to the

stanford law library and check out the judges record and his record before he became a judge. and i discovered in those files amicus curae papers on the civil rights organizations. i learned that no civil rights advocates for never lost a case in the judge's court. i was are ready familiar with bourque's record before i even looked into the law because i was teaching economics and often read things he wrote about antitrust law, which were brilliant things. so enormously intelligent man, enormously decent man, and all sorts of other filth was brought up. one, for example, he had worked for big corporations, you see, because money was more important to him.

he was an academic, which was not a big book enterprise to get rich quick, and e-government official, of which the same could be said. at the particular time he went to work at a high salary in business, his wife was dying of cancer and you wanted to have the money to make her last days as comfortable as he possibly could. and for that to be turned into some kind of cheap, political charge, was truly despicable. more than that, the difference of one man on the supreme court is divided is enormous. and every time i read an opinion by judge -- justice anthony kennedy that is wishy-washy and incoherent in some cases, i think that that is the price of defeating judge bourque, because mr. lamb: what else? he was sent in to replace him. mr. lamb: what else? on the supremeke court today just as an institution after all of these

years? mr. sowell: oh, it's very dicey. and what is dicey are the freedoms that depend upon whether the court enforced the constitution or whether they go off on their own social adventures. i think the greatest disappointment with this court robertsf justice disregarding the 10th amendment and finding some terribly clever way of evading it and declaring obamacare constitutional. the 10th amendment says that the government has only such powers -- the federal government has only such powers as are specifically designated to it. and all other powers, either belong to state governments or belong to the people themselves. there is no power for the federal government to tell people what kind of medical insurance they have to buy, even if they prefer something else. but because i have no idea what terrible -- terribly clever reasons the chief justice might have had -- but once you knock

down the 10th amendment, there's really nothing the government can't order us to do. mr. lamb: here's another clip -- we talked out in palo alto in 2005, and it is very brief, only 20 seconds. i want you to give us your reaction of what you said then. on thisct of 9/11 country in the world. [video clip] mr. sowell: oh, my gosh. we will never be the same again. i'm disappointed in people who seem to realize it is not business as usual anymore. there are things we have to do that we don't want to do, but the alternative is far worse. mr. lamb: that was 2005. here we are 12 years later. what would you say today if the same question was asked? mr. sowell: i think i would give this a answer, and i would be more apprehensive today because the previous a administration has now given iran the go-ahead

.o develop nuclear weapons and iran is testing intercontinental missiles. now, the thing they're supposed to be preparing to do is attack israel. israel is closer to iran than boston is to denver, all right? you don't need intercontinental missiles to attack missiles -- israel. you need intercontinental missiles who are on another continent. there is not a great mystery as to who would likely be the target if they ever decided to go that route. and i think right now we're doing what was done by the western powers in the 1930's as his waras building up machine. you're going day-to-day, taking the easy path and avoiding the hard problems on the assumption that somehow or another you will muddle through.

and they came very close to not muddling through. france was conquered during world war ii. and one of my columns recently, it may have been one of the last ones fraulein know, i suggested -- for all i know, i suggest to people who want to understand what is happening in the world today should read a book called "the gathering storm" which is not about today. it is about the 1930's. but once you see this kind of drifting in the face -- fatal dangers, you understand the thinking or lack of thinking that is going on today in the way we are approaching the kinds of dangers we are facing now -- which are far worse. most people don't understand that for the first three years of world war ii, the western powers never won a single battle. literally, either in europe or in asia. they were beaten time and time again because the pacifist had

gotten their way in the 1930's and presented an adequate buildup of military forces for which men paid their lives in those early years of world war ii. fortunately, at some point, the west learned their lesson. the united states entered with tremendous reductive capacity and was able to supply itself, britain, and the soviet union with the powers and the weapons needed to defeat the not these and later the japanese. but we're not going to have that kind of time in a nuclear war. you're not going to have three years to muddle around and get beaten and then come back. we will be lucky we have a year to get beat and still come back. storm"b: "the gathering as you said at that late column in december was written by winston churchill. is there anybody today in your opinion decides what you just said that is suggesting that we ought to worry about the gathering storm in public life? mr. sowell: there are people --

oh, you mean holding some official position? not that i have noticed. you don't get -- and with center , two in one century. ronald reagan will be the closest analogy, but of course, he, too, is gone. inherent- what are the constraints of which were operating and what can you do within those constraints? i think of reagan, when the soviets set up building a nuclear weapons in eastern europe and reagan responded by sending an american nuclear weapons in western europe pointing at eastern europe. people were horrified and saying, this man is going to get us into a war. we will be annihilated. for chile he disregarded them completely. instead of getting us into the war, he brought the cold war to an end. people who lived through the

cold war with the fear of nuclear annihilation hanging over us all of that time have no idea what a fee that was. and he did it without firing a signal shot at the soviet union. it was everk considered for a peace prize. you know, you don't get a nobel peace prize for having produced peace. you get a nobel peace prize for saying the kinds of things that people on the nobel committee think they're going to prove out piece. even though those things, such tamblyn, theies of prime minister of britain in the 1930's, said which led to the war. you have been retired from writing your column. how closely have you paid attention to what is going on in this country in the world? mr. sowell: oh, not nearly as closely as before. none of it is truly encouraging, however. well, i won't say that.

i think the new administration in washington has some very good people, better than i think most recent administrations have had in the top positions. the only question is whether the president listens to them. and that we won't know until, you know, a lot more time has passed. mr. lamb: i want to completely change what we're talking about this something that you seem to enjoy and it is important to you as you mentioned when you take your four days off and went to yosemite with your friends and did your for tiger fee. how long have you been a photographer? you have this on your website, and we will show some in a moment. how long have you been doing photography? mr. sowell: i took my first picture in 1950. and when the results came back from the drugstore, i was just talked from that point on. previously, i had been thinking of becoming an artist. i used to do a lot of sketching and so forth. i had a sense of, you know, design and art and so on.

and then when i was in the marine corps, the marines sent me to enable photography school thats oconee a -- it's the cola. when i got out and was going to for the i worked university news office as a photographer in order to help pay the bill. it was the perfect job because it was something i could do whenever i had the time. not just taking the pictures, but when a photographer in charge -- you always had more negatives than he a time to print them. so if i happen to be awake at 2:00 a.m. for some reason and wasn't going back to sleep, i could go over to the news office , let myself in, and print the negatives that he had sitting on his desk, and leave it on the desk for him and tell him my

time so i would be paid. it was a great job. mr. lamb: for the audience, i can see you, you can't see me. and you're not going to be at lessee these pictures -- photographs, but i want to throw one up on the screen. i know you have a list of what we're going to look at. the first one, i think, is yosemite. is that el capitan? it is.ell: it was taken with a 4 by 5 lindhoff camera with a 75 millimeter lens. mr. lamb: we did you take it? mr. sowell: that i don't remember. it was before when digital, so it was towards the end of the 1900s. mr. lamb: the next one is a waterfall. mr. sowell:

yes. mr. lamb: it appears to be in black and white. mr. sowell: that would be yosemite falls in the winter i believe. i think there is snow on the ground. is lamb: your photography black and white and color? do you like black and white or color when you are doing photography. butsowell: i like both, when i was doing film, most of it was black and white. and now that i'm digital, most of it is color. .olor film can be very delicate so when i traveled with color film, i do take along a cooler i could plug into the car to keep it cool. i was traveling and then i would have to plug it into a hotel room outlet when i got there because the colors will change if you love the color film set out in the warm weather. fortunately, with digital, doesn't make any difference. mr. lamb: the third photo is a young lady sitting on the chair.

mr. sowell: yes, yes. mr. lamb: she's about 3 or 4 . do we know who that is? mr. sowell: i know, but i'm not going to mention the name. but she is now a retired lady. mr. lamb: when did you take this picture? mr. sowell: oh, back in the i believe --in fact, i'm almost 1950's. certain it was before -- oh, it was probably after i went into the marine corps's. i know which camera i took it with. it was a bush preslin, and i know the lens and so on. that would have been still in the early 1950's. mr. lamb: is it anyway of calculating -- i don't need another dollar amount, but have you spent a lot of your extra money that you had on photography over the years and has a bin and expense of hobby? mr. sowell: it is really my only extravagance. i'm not big on clothes or other

luxuries. my wife doesn't wear jewelry and stuff. this is my only thing. i will say when i finally decided to go completely digital and sold all of my photographic agreement to a local camera store, they paid me over $10,000 for what was up at the time, used equipment and some of it obsolete. so i must have spent an awful lot more than that when i bought it originally. of lamb: here's a photograph kids playing on the beach in the water. mr. sowell: oh, yes. mr. lamb: where's that? mr. sowell: that is the santa monica beach in southern california. the camera was a twin lens reflex called a la mira 330. boardwalk,bly on the the santa monica boardwalk looking down at them. i saw their picture and just took it. mr. lamb: what have you done with your photographs? have the catalog them all?

are you going to give them to somebody? mr. sowell: no. well, i have negatives. i have a few that are prints. of course, most of them, the ones i really like, i have hanging on the walls in my home. the negative. the first negative in my file was taken in 1948 of people picketing the white house when truman was president. mr. lamb: how many different kinds of cameras have you used over the years? mr. sowell: oh, my gosh. at one time, i had a dozen cameras simultaneously. so this will give you -- obviously, there's been turnover. today, i struggle along with six. just six. what kind of cameras now? mr. sowell: i do most of my pictures with two nikon d3x's. and then i have a couple of sony

others,and a couple of miscellaneous. mr. lamb: here's a photograph of a gentleman painting with a beret and a cigar. where is that? mr. sowell: oh, yes. that is greenwich village in 1952 in the camera was a rolo cord. mr. lamb: when you take a picture of somebody like this, d you have to get their permission to use it. mr. sowell: i hope not because i didn't get his permission. [laughter] mr. lamb: here's an aerial shot . it looks like niagara falls. my first question is, how did you get this picture? mr. sowell: from a helicopter. sometimes i've charted a helicopter for this purpose. in this case, there was already an existing helicopter service so i just got on it for the heck of it and flew around niagara

falls and sibley shot the picture out the window. mr. lamb: have you sold any of your photographs? mr. sowell: not really. some of them have been published. there was a picture i took of a .ady who was an academic and someone did some kind of future about her and requested a of this photograph. i had given it to the lady in question. when they were interviewing her, they asked if they could use it. i said, sure, go ahead. i put one on the cover of a book of mine. , that book was out-of-print inside of a year. it got very little exposure. mr. lamb: i went to show up photograph of the golding gate bridge and the cars coming across it. again, how did you get this photograph? mr. sowell: there is an observation area near the golden nikonridge and i had my d3xs and had a 500 to 900 mill

-- millimeter telephoto and i use that to take a particular picture. mr. lamb: what do you look for when doing photography? mr. sowell: i'm looking for something that makes an interesting scene. and when i see it, i go take it. sometimes i preplan. in looking through old pictures of yellowstone national park, before i ever went there, i saw a picture of lower yellowstone falls. i thought, my gosh, i'm sure i could take a picture better than that. and when i went there, i set it up and i think i did take a better picture than that. my wife tells me i was there for two hours. fortunately, she brought along a large book to read as she does on these occasions. i was amazed when she told me i had been there for two hours. i took the picture from every conceivable position with every conceivable camera and lens combination. mr. lamb: how long have you been

married and where did you meet your wife? mr. sowell: i have been married 36 years. and i like to say that i got my wife because of affirmative action. that i had written an article about affirmative action which she read in palo alto, and she complained to a mutual friend that she really objected to what i had said and thought i was wrong. he said, well, you know, he is right here in palo alto. why don't attribute two of you get together for lunch and work out your differences? well, we got together for lunch. we have not worked out our differences to this day, but things took a turn in another direction. mr. lamb: does she agree with you politically at all? mr. sowell: on a lot of things, but of course, no wives and husbands agree on all things. mr. lamb: what would be your device after all of these years of marriage where you have married somebody that did not have the exact political views? how do you deal with it?

oh, heavens, i'm not one of those people that thinks you should go berserk because you think differently than they do. my heavens, that doesn't -- it is pathetic that people nowadays think that the fact they disagree with somebody is a reason to go creating a riot and destroying property, as virtually, just recently, the latest among any number of similar incidents across the country. mr. lamb: we have one last photograph and that is an aerial view you took of stanford university, right where you are now. where were you when you took this picture? mr. sowell: i was in a helicopter that i charted. we simply flew over the campus and took the pictures. mr. lamb: and all of these -- mr. sowell: handheld camera. mr. lamb: the tower is the

hoover institution. mr. sowell: yes, it is. mr. lamb: you have been there how long? mr. sowell: since 1980 which would be, my heavens, my gosh -- mr. lamb: about 36, 30 seven years. how has stanford changed since you have been on that campus? mr. sowell: you know, i'm one of the least informed persons you could have found on what goes on at the stanford campus. i took a job at the hoover institution rather than another job that was offered to me back east mainly because i this time, i was thoroughly disgusted with the academic world. i never planned to teach again. and the hoover institution was a perfect place for me because it will test would allow me to do the work i wanted to do, research, and writing and so on. and have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the campus, and that is the my policy the entire time i have been here. and i've been up happiest and

most productive part of my career. mr. lamb: there is something -- i wonder if you are aware of this, something on twitter massowell that you did not start. are you aware of that? mr. sowell: someone told me that. i don't think i've ever gone to look at it. mr. lamb: he said, if it is a he, i am not thomas sowell, but i own all of his books. quotes he has tweeted out to i will read back to your couple of the the followers. 87,000 followers reading your work. here is 1 -- "most people who read the calmness manifesto probably have no idea that it was written by a couple of young men who had never worked a day in their lives and who nevertheless spoke only in the name of the workers. similar offspring of inherited wealth have repeatedly provided the leadership of radical movements with similar pretenses

of speaking for the people." was that your book on marx? mr. sowell: no, it was --no, i have putnk i would things like that in that particular book, which was really a study of the history of ideas. mr. lamb: review ever a marxist? oh, yes, in my 20's. fortunately, unlike today's left, i never felt that i had to avoid people with different views. marxist, iears as a read everything across the political spectrum. i have to this day a book on berg that i first read back when i was undergraduate at harvard, and i treasure that book will stop i could tell even then. i understood there were reasons why people have different views, as i even see today. it is not just -- it's not just

a question of being on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. mr. lamb: here's another tweet dashed on "racism is not dead, but it is on life-support support cap to live by politicians, race hustlers, and people who get a sense of superiority i denouncing others as racist." mr. sowell: yes. i suspect that there are millions of americans who would be gratified if the whole subject of race simply vanished into thin air because they're sick of hearing about it. but there are people for whom this is a very lucrative business. i'm amazed at how little attention was paid to the fact owes theharpton federal government millions of dollars in taxes. you don't owe millions of dollars in taxes and less use made millions of dollars in income. and the question is, how does this man, you know, ever get into position to make millions of dollars other than by race hustling?

tweet.b: one more "you will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats, procedure is everything and now comes are nothing. if you have been living in a world where outcomes are everything, you may have a very hard time understanding bureaucratic thinking or practices." mr. sowell:2 yes, yes. i know from time to time my wife was amazed at some of the foolish things that have been done by the government. if you understand bureaucracy, it makes perfect sense. i'll give you an example. some years ago, i went on a trip expensesi turned my over to the university for reimbursement. no one at the university question any of the major expenditures, but someone decided that i should not be reimbursed for the collision damage of renting a car from one

of the agencies because stanford has a clause that it covers that and so on. and i was so outraged that i went to the head of the hoover institution. and you had better things to do than this. so he gave me a midyear raise in the amount of the collision so he couldaiver, get this thing off his back. but those people who did that never asked, you know, why was i there four dates for this event? and the answer was, i had a lot of -- there's no need even say that. so long as they have paper, they are happy, you know? seize upon these little things that are utterly inconsequential and let everything else go by. mr. lamb: you're not that far away from your 87th birthday. what do you intend to do with -- and this has like a crazy question -- but what do you want

to call bush? what is your so-called bucket list for the rest of your life? mr. sowell: i will be happy if i can finish up all of the things that i have currently going, which would be quite a project. finished i've already up the third edition of my book. months ago, my assistants were so busy, that they have not had a chance to work on that and to put it into print. mr. lamb: so you have a book coming out soon? mr. sowell: not soon. and i don't even have a timetable because i find the easiest way for me to work is to tell no one, not even my agent, what i'm working on. and when it is all finished, i then send the finished managed to my agent and leave it with her. she knows to call me back when she has an offer. mr. lamb: our guest for the last hour has been dr. thomas sowell.

he is sitting on the stanford campus where he has an office, but he writes a lot out of his home. there is a lot to read if people are interested in reading a lot of your works, you are books. mr. sowell: thank you for having thank you for much for joining us. me. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]. >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. >> and live now to the floor of the