>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight, president obama's final press conference this afternoon before leaving for vacation in hawaii. >> once we had clarity and certainty around what, in fact, had happened, we publicly announced that, in fact, russia had hacked into the d.n.c. >> rose: also this evening tom friedman of the "new york times" about the president and what he said. >> my overall reaction is one of profound sadness and depression because i am going to, speaking just for myself as one citizen, so miss this man's decency, his integrity, the way he is reflective about issues. i don't always agree with him, but he has been, i think in so many ways, he, his family and his administration, the decency,

integrity and the reflective way they have handled problems, i am really going to miss and i am really bummed out. >> rose: more comment from john dickerson of "slate" and cbs news. >> when he reflected every night before going to bed thinking about what more he could have done in aleppo and south sudan and america, just the sense of regret, george w. bush used the word "disappointed" so many times, it's just the sense it's the end here, 34 days till it's over and a sense of what couldn't be done. but then clinging to that hope from his speech in 2004 at the democratic convention where he said i still believe in that hope. >> rose: also this evening mark shriver on his book about pope francis, grating his 80t 80th birthday. >> the issue around vatican bank, sexual abuse scandals,

comments and islam and women, all those things didn't mesh with my understanding of what the catholic church sood fo and the men and women i had huge admiration for. so when pope francis asked the people to bless him as he blessed them, the next day when he paid his own hotel bill and got on his knees for people, i had been in those places where i would never go and have the guts to kiss and wash their feet. >> rose: we conclude with will ahmed and wearable gear is a huge christmas gift. >> athletes overtraining, undertraining, misinterpreting fitness peaks, not understanding the importance of recovery or sleep. for me i wanted to better understand the human body and i did a lot of physiology research while at laferred. i met with cardiologists and physiologists, and in the

process of reading medical papers, i came up with a thesis of how you could better understand the body. >> rose: president obama, tom friedman, john dickerson, mark shriver and will ahmed, when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin this evening with president obama's final press conference of 2016. he held it this afternoon before departing for his annual family vacation to hawaii. here are excerpts from that press conference. >> once we had clarity and

certainty around what, in fact, had happened, we publicly announced that, in fact, russia had hacked into the d.n.c. and, at that time, we did not attribute motives or any interpretations of why they had done so. we didn't discuss what the effects of it might be. we simply let people know the public know just as we had let members of congress know that this had happened, and as a consequence, all of you wrote a lot of stories about both what had happened and then you interpreted why that might have happened and what effect it was going to have on the election outcomes. we did not, and the reason we

did not was because, in this hyperpartisan amount atmospherea time when my primary concern was making sure the election process was not in any way damaged, at a time when anything that was said by me or anybody in the white house would immediately be seen through a partisan lens, i wanted to make sure everybody understood we were playing this straight, that we weren't trying to advantage one side or the other but were trying to let people know that with respect to syria what i consistently have done is take the best course that i can to try to end the civil war, while having also to take into account the long-term national security interest of the united states, and throughout this process, based

on hours of meetings, if you tall idea -- tallied it up, days or weeks of meetings where we went through every position in painful detail with maps, and we had our military, and we had our aid agencies, and we had our diplomatic teams, and sometimes we would bring in outsiders who were critics of ours. whenever we went through it, the challenge was that, short of putting large numbers of u.s. troops on the ground, uninvited, without any international law mandate, without sufficient support from congress, at a time when we still had troops in afghanistan and we still had troops in iraq and we had just

gone through over a decade of war and spent trillions of dollars, and when the opposition on the ground was not cohesive enough to necessarily govern a country, and you had a military superpower in russia prepared to do whatever it took to keep its clients safe involved, and you had a region military power in iran who saw their vital strategic interests at stake and was willing to send in as many of their people or proxies to support the regime. i think all our foreign policy should be subject to fresh eyes. i think i've said this therefore, i am very proud of the work i've done. i think i am a better president now than when i started, but, you know, if you're here for

eight years in the bubble, you start seeing things a certain way and you benefit from the democracy benefits, america benefits from some new perspectives, and i think it should be not just the prerogative but the obligation of a new president to examine everything that's been done and see what makes sense and what doesn't. that's what i did when i came in, and i'm assuming any new me exercises.l undertake those and given the importance of the relationship between the united states and china, given how much is at stake in terms of the world economy, national security, our presence in the asia-pacific, china's increasing role in international affairs, there's probably no bilateral relationship that carries more

significance and where there is also the potential if that relationship breaks down or goes into a full conflict mode that everybody is worse off. so i think it's fine for him to take a look at it. >> rose: joining me now from the studios of carnegie endowment for national peace in washington, tom friedman, a columnist for the "new york times," pulitzer prize recipient. his new book is called "thank you for being late: an optimist guide to thriving in the age of acceleration." i am pleased to have him back on the the program. tom, beginning with your reaction to overall what the president said and secondly will talk about specifics ability russia, china and other issues. >> charlie, my overall reaction is one of profound sadness and depression because i am going to, speaking just for myself as

one citizen, so miss this man's decency, his integrity, the way he is reflective about issues. i don't always agree with him, but he has been, i think in so many ways, he, his family and his administration, the decency, integrity and the reflective way they have handled problems, i am really going to miss and i am really bummed out. that's what i feel. >> rose: from that, you hear him talking about the difference in campaigning and governing. he basically seems to be saying we have differences, the president-elect and me, my record stands there, you can see what i've done, and we have to wait and see what this president-elect does in order to make the judgment. >> you know, the big takeaway that i would urge everyone watching your show, charlie, to either listen to that press

conference or, better yet, read it, and read the sections about two-thirds of the way through where the president really talks about what is it that distinguishes america? it's our institutions. it's the quality of our institutions. and if we start becoming sunnis and shiites and we are well on our way to doing that, that if our politics becomes so triballized, that it doesn't matter what the head of our party does either side, what kind of personal behavior he engages in, what kind of lies he tells, it doesn't matter, you've just got to vote for him because he's your tribe, that will destroy the very core of what makes america unique and that's our institutions. i think his riff on that is worth everybody reading, especially the president-elect and his team. >> rose: from that, let's talk about specifics in terms of what he said about russia. you have written about hacking.

the president seemed to have no doubt that the russians had done it. the president-elect seems not yet to have accepted that. the president said, in classic kind of way, nothing happens in russia without vladimir putin knowing about it, and clearly suggesting that he did, but that we'll wait until the report comes out for the american people to know more. >> yeah, i have no doubt on the basis of what the president has now said, the f.b.i., it was just reported, has concurred with the cy that this was a -- with the c.i.a. that this was a putin-directed hack of the democratic party. so i think we have a real problem here. i do not dispute one bit that donald trump won this election on the basis of how the votes were counted, the electoral college fair and square. he is the next president of the united states. many factors fed into his triumph, but it is absolutely indisputable that part of --

that russia was involved in trying to tip this election his way, by spilling out the e-mails of the democratic party and then having russia's cat's ball wikileaks base cancally dispense them one at a time and sour and sully the democratic party and its nominee hillary clinton. i believe that is an attack on the core of our democracy. the only thing i really disagree with obama about is i wish that when they determined that in september and october, they would have taken some action. but we say in baseball terms, a high fast ball right at putin's head to make him understand just how serious that is. >> rose: on aleppo, he said he thought about it every day and he looked for lots of ways. he asked every day, was there a

better approach, his military people and others, but he didn't think that he could change the situation without a massive input of american troops, and we had other priorities as well. >> look, i totally sympathize with anyone who has to deal with the problem of syria, it's the problem from hell, and i don't pretend to be any smarter than anybody else, but i think there was a middle way that the president could have chosen and didn't and i think, in retrospect, it was a mistake. i began to change my view over a year ago. we talked a long time ago, charlie, five years ago, and i made the point libya implodes but syria explodes and it would explode around it. it is destabilizing lebanon, jordan, iraq and turkey, and, most of all, from our point of view, it's destabilizing other

great center of g.m.ic free markets in the world, the european union, because to have the refugee outflow. and i don't think the choices were to take over, invade syria or do nothing. i think there was a third option. i think there could have been a t.o. response. it wouldn't have to fall entirely on us, but if we had created a safe zone and a "no fly" zone in western turkey where refugees could gather and be safe, it's not that it would solve the problem, but it would have given us leverage on the ground to actually force the kind of diplomatic power sharing that obama wants and that he's been trying to do over the last year and a half, and john kerry has failed to do because, basically, doing diplomacy in the middle east without leverage is like playing baseball without a bat. your hand really starts to hurt aftera while, and we were playing baseball without a bat in syria, and the russians knew

it. i don't think we had to invade the country, but a n.a.t.o. operation, collective security, this was a threat to our n.a.t.o. partners, putting people on the ground, creating a "no fly" zone in western syria, could have given us the the leverage to negotiate a wider power sharing agreement that we simply didn't have, and i think that was a mistake. >> rose: on china and the idea of the reporter who asked the question, said looking at china with fresh eyes, you know, the president immediately said, that's a good question, because you want a new president-elect to look at it with fresh eyes and then you want him to explain the one china policy and why it was at the core of chinese beliefs, and you had to work out the process of what would happen. what did you think of that? >> let me put that answer, charlie, into a wider context, because i think it's something that we should be concerned about with president-elect

trump. it is totally legitimate, and president obama suggested that, to want to look at china policy with fresh eyes. maybe we should have been a little harder here or there. but what is totally illegitimate, what is irresponsible is to launch off on undermining the 40-year-old taiwan-china-america security agreement that has produced 40 years of peace and stability both for the three partners and for east asia, that has produced enormous prosperity for all these countries. and to do that, without getting a single briefing from the state department, to do that, we now understand on the basis of lobbying by bob dole with a $140,000 contract from the taiwanese government to try to tilt trump in a different direction, that's just irresponsible. but it goes to a larger

question. it is perfectly excusable, charlie, to question, do we really know whether putin hacked these elections? what is utterly inexcusable is to simply dismiss that notion without coming to washington, sitting down with the director of national intelligence, mr. clapper, one of the finest public servants we have, and saying let me see all the evidence you have. if after that donald trump wants to dismiss it, that's fine, but to dismiss it without even looking at the evidence? and finally i would say, charlie, to point to all the key and environmental energy positions in your administration, people who are on record as basically denying the reality of climate change, to do that without even asking for a single briefing from the world's greatest climate scientists that work for n.a.s.a. and n.o.a.a. -- the national oceanographic and

atmospheric administration -- which will now be working for donald trump and are in the administration he will lead, to simply appoint those people without asking for a single briefing from the greatest experts in the world? that is inexcusable. it is that kind of behavior that leaves me unnerved. >> rose: i assume the president-elect will say, well, i invited al gore in, he's been the most visible people in terms of what he has said and done about climate change, and we had a long conversation. >> yeah, well, you know, charlie, i wrote a book on this subject eight years ago. it took me a long time to get my arms around it, and god bless al gore for going in and doing it and my hat is truly off to him. but the fact is you need more than an hour-long briefing with al gore to understand the race parameters of this. i'd say it actually is worth kind of a day to understand

what's happening with the earth science. >> rose: what do you think the meeting donald trump had with people from the tech community? >> wouldn't really tell what came out of it. trump's a very good salesman, he's very good at telling people what they wer they want to heary take on the tech community? but the fact is, it gets to the question of, charlie, he had this hat,make america great again. if you want to make america great again, you have to know what auld made america great. we had a five o-part formula for success. we educated our people. when the cotton gin, we hat universal primary education. the factory, universal secondary education, when the computer, universal post-secondary education. that's the principle. second, we had the most government-funded research. third, we had the best rules to incentivize risk taking and

prevent recklessness. fourth, we had the best infrastructure in the world, railroads, ports, airports, and lastly, we had the world's greatest immigration system to attract risk-takers and energetic people. that's how we're great. so you can love the tech community, but basically through your immigration policies shout through a bullhorn to the world stay away, you're not helping the tech community and you're not going to make america great again. >> rose: here we are talking about hacking, talking about a foreign country and its leader, trying to either create chaos or influence an election or election process, we're talking about a president who responds not via a press conference but via twitter, what's going on here? and is this what 2017 is going to be? a political discussion that takes place primarily on the internet? >> i think we're at a very

important moment. you know, we talked the other day of a -- i have a chapter in my book, and for me it's one of the most important, it's called is god in cyberspace? and it came from a question i once got on book tour. i called a rabbi friend of mine in amsterdam and asked him, what's the right answer to this question? and he said to me, you know, tom, in the jewish faith, we have a biblical and post-biblical view of god, and the biblical view is the almighty is almighty. if that's your view of god, he's not in cyberspace. fortunately we have a post-biblical view of god and that's god manifests himself by how we behave. if we want got in cyberspace, we have to bring him there by how we behave there. i've expanded this in a book for

a very simple reason. i first asked the question 20 years ago. but today what's happened is cyberspace, and obama alluded to this, the digital world has become the center of our lives. everything now happens in cyberspace. it's where we find a date, a spouse, where we meet our friends, where we do business, where we educate and do commerce. in other words, our lives have migrated to a realm where we're all connected but nobody's in charge and we really saw it crystallized in the last few weeks. pick up the paper this morning, we discover that in 2013 a million yahoo users were completely hacked, all their data and passwords. we now know putin was hacking our election. i heard a russian bank got hacked for $31 million. we've migrated our lives to a realm where there is no legal system and this is going to become more and more important.

i think this conversation charlie, is the central political and philosophical issue of our time today. if god is not in cyberspace and we have to bring him, there how do we do that? >> rose: tom, thank you so much and thank you to the people to have the carnegie international endowment for helping you connect today. tom's book is called "thank you for being late." we'll be right back. stay with us. >> rose: joining me now is john dickerson, the political director for cbs and moderator of "face the nation," also a political columnist for "slate" magazine. john, the the president has given his last press conference of 2016. he's off to recharge his batteries. what's your takeaway from what the president says and how he sees this year? >> three things going on. one, of course, the question of

putin's role in the election. he was pressed three times, was putin involved. he didn't say yes but essentially said yes which is nothing happens at that level in russia without putin's consent. he was so careful throughout this press conference, staying out of the way of anything complicated, whether the hacking cost hillary clinton the election, whether he would advise the elek tores who have been about to vote to get a briefing, whether he would lift the lid on the evidence, he was careful. but he scolded republicans for sort of on the one hand criticizing him for not being tough enough on vladimir putin and throwing their lot in with a candidate who has been very supportive and said nice things about vladimir putin. his point was we've become so political is everything is about winning an election. but what will infuriate democrats about that is they

will say, wait a minute, you're talking about republican behavior. don't say this is just a fault of our politics at the moment. keep the blame where they believe it should be and where the president believes it should be which is among republicans. he did say ronald reagan would be rolling over in his grave in. assault way he said america will only be weakened by putin if america loses sight of its values, then he named a couple of things that could cause america to do so, and some are things donald trump did as part of his campaign including targeting the press and that thing. it was subtle but a shot and he complained about the nature of american politics. the other thing is when he reflected on going to bet every -- bed every night thinking about what he had not done and could he do more in aleppo, south sudan and america. george w. bush used the word "disappointed" so many times.

the sense it's the end here, 34 days until it's over, and a sense of what couldn't be done. but then clinging to that hope from his speech in 2004 at the democratic convention where he said i still believe in that hope. i think that is the route to greatness which is to get rid of the partisanship. so coming out of his presidency the way he came in, talking about the hope he had for bipartisanship. >> rose: at the end he made his most essential pieces as he tried to summarize what he was trying to say in his press conference. he said putin will be successful but those who wish us no good will only be successful if we forget the values that made us who we are. >> yeah, that's exactly right. when he said that it was right up against when he said republicans forgot their values by supporting donald trump for the purpose of their election but forgetting who vladimir

putin was because of trump's connection to him and then also supporting someone who did things against our values. democrats, of course, want a cry from the heart from him about the hacking and about what it's done to the election. they didn't get that. they never do because he's too temperate. but he did go further, much further. at some point he said, oh, come on. he went as far as barack obama goes, i guess would be a way to put it. >> rose: he also seemed to want to start with the idea of the economy. i think that when he looks back at the eight years and he looks at how bad the economy was and he looks at how good the economy is today, that seems to be something that is simply there. you can only compare that to what might have been and to make a criticism. >> yeah, it felt like he is doing and his administration is doing everything they can to sort of pack the sandbags against the inevitable assault,

and the assault coming from the trump administration is quite considerable. i mean, they're going to dismantle as fast as possible his significant legislature achievement the affordable care act. they will find an alternative to basically get people out of the restrictions of dodd-frank in terms of wreath. they are going to get rid of a number of other regulations. they're going to appoint people to cabinet agencies, the e.p.a., to basically dismantle those agencies. what it seemed like he was trying to do at the beginning of the press conference is add the last few grains of sand to say we built something here, there have been successes. and then handed off something donald trump built on as if that was their attempt. >> rose: he also spoke to china in terms to have one china policy recognizing what it means to the chinese but also saying fresh eyes on any foreign policy

question is probably an interesting process to take place. >> right. and surely fresh eyes on everything is a an interesting process. but as you quite rightly point out, he said two things, one, h he repeated remarks he said in 2008 when he was not yet the president but the president-elect. he said there was only one president at a time and he said the identical thing today, and the point was, essentially, you know, whether it's russia or china and taiwan, donald trump has done things and made decisions and offered opinions that are setting -- that are sending signals about u.s. policy. and the taiwan phone call in particular, the president was quite clear about why the one china policy is the most important thing, as if to kind of reeducate the president-elect both about the importance of it but also to say, you know, stay in your lane until the 20th of january. >> rose: john dickerson, happy new year, happy holidays, merry

christmas. our conversation through this year 2016 has meant a lot to me and this show, so thank you so much. >> all back to you, charlie. i can't wait till 2017. >> rose: me, too. and we'll be right back. stay with us. >> rose: mark shriver is here, president of "save the children action network." he is a former maryland state legislature. he's also a life-long catholic. he had become disillusioned with his faith until the 2013 election of pope francis at the 266th roman catholic pontiff. shriver's book trails his own personal journey and reflects his own face. it's called "pilgrimage: my search for the real pope francis." pleased tore mark shriver back at this table. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: tell me why you decided to do this and we'll talk about how you did it including going to argentina and trying to talk to the pope. >> born and raised a catholic.

i have huge admiration for priests and nuns all across the country. the work we do, there is always a nun or priest in the community. what was happening with the curia, the issues around the vatican bank, sexual abuse scandals, comments about islam and women, all those things didn't mesh with the things i knew the catholic church stood for and the men and women i had admiration for. so when pope francis asked the folks to bless him before he blessed hem. the ext week when he paid his hotel bill, when he got on his knees and washed and kissed the feet of the juvenile delinquents including a muslim girl, and i have been in those places and i would never have the guts to get on my knees and kiss and wash their feet.

so i wanted to know about him. he was the first jesuit pope ever. they've taken an oath if another jesuit is trying to aspire to higher office they're supposed to report them. >> rose: because ambition is a bad thing? >> yes, and st. ignatius who created the order believed in the humanity and he didn't want his jesuit followers to angle for promotions. beer goalia told me he had been offered the bishop's twice and turned it downed down and accepted it on the third time. but so many questions, how did the first jesuit become a pope, a raise to power and huge crash, in exile two years. >> rose: you traveled on your pig gram angioargentina to find him and find out what influences shaped his life. >> yes, went into his neighborhood where he grew up, saw where he had the

conversational where he decided he would be a priest. it's nestled in a working class neighborhood. beautiful but not or nate like in america. very working class focus. the short answer to your question about what happened is he got a big position, was provincial of argentina and par guy. he ran auld jesuits in the two countries and he was very authoritarian. he didn't collaborate, consult others in his decision-making and drove a wedge between jesuits who loved him and those who thought he was too focused on authority. this was about ten years after vatican two. you have liberation theology roiling in central and south america. a lot of folks thought that was communism and they were going to overthrow the established governments. you had what was going on in nicaragua, guatemala, and the beginning of the dirty war in argentina, their civil war.

>> rose: but correct me if i'm not wrong, isn't latin america and africa the greatest growing areas of the world today for the catholic church? >> yes. and he was sent into ex compile. >> rose: what happens there? you clean and feed old jesuits and listen to confessions. so he went to being the most important jesuits in the country to take care of dying jesuits. he came back different. the dark night of the soul. he didn't get knocked off his donkey like saul on the road to damascus, but he went through a transfer might. then in the 1990s, in argentina, there was a great depression, made him nor sensitive to the needs of the poor and vulnerable. so the book is a collection of stories of people who are rabb

bites, mothers who lost kids in fires, a jewish dad who lost his daughter in the jewish bombing in 1994 in the jewish community center, all these had deep relationships with pope francis. >> rose: he has a reputation as being a pastoral pope. >> yes, and that's different than his predecessors who were scholars. i think pastorals were looking for that approach. >> rose: give nepal ticks of when benedict was selected. did he come in second? >> that's what everybody says. they don't tell you but they don't. that's kind of the catholic church. i think he was getting ready to retire this last go round. he was of retirement age and they already started the process of moving out of his very small room in ben buenos buenos aires.

the church is growing in central and south america, and he played a central role helping them understand about th focusing one poor. st. ignatius said you've got to go to the periphery and accompany people on their life. and pope francis is a jesuit through his training. >> rose: benedict said i'm retiring, i'm not up to it anymore. >> yes. >> rose: so they've got to select another pope. does he win on the first ballot or five ballots? ere for the conclave. is day.t. >> the pope of italian dissent whose grandmother was born in italy. a peasant woman who moved the

family to argentina and denounced mussolini. his grandmother lives around the corner in buenos ares, heavily italian, beautiful city, and he groce up in a very italian culture and he becomes pope. but that journey which is what the book is really about, i'm not as interested honestly in how he became pope as much as who he is and how he evolved. >> rose: i'm interested in both because the idea of the politics of the vatican are interesting to me. it's interesting to me whether he will take on the existing power structure. he clearly is to a degree. >> absolutely. >> rose: but it is not easy. there are entrenched powers in the catholic church who like their power. >> and it's a 2000 year old institution and worldwide, not american. and the cardinals are more

conservative than what we have in america. it's a huge, worldwide operation. so when he asked the church studies whether women become deacons, i think that's a big deal. i think we'll see women deacons and women preaching in catholic services in our lifetime. >> rose: you believe he wants to change the church. there is a limit to what he will change doctrinally, clearly, but he seems to be open to a conversation about things. >> yeah, absolutely. and he's done that with the family. >> rose: joh john paul ii wasn't and pope benedict wasn't. >> yes, and you see that. and not only creating the commission to see whether there will be women deacons, but also the way he acts. >> rose: almost a tolerance. there is, and nonjudgmental. the catholic church finished an extraordinary jubilee of mercy and at the end he tells the

story of choosing mercy or misery. he tells the story of a woman caught in awe -- adultery and they bring her h to jesus and jesus says let him without sin cast the first stone. everyone leaves. jesus says, i don't condemn you. go and sin no more. jesus knew the woman would sin again because we all do, but i think he believes by showing mercy and forgiveness you will change people's heart and behavior more than through strict law and the interpretation of the law and that's challenging to a lot of people. and that's challenging to me. i'm not a typical conservative catholic, but he's challenging. >> rose: how you changing? what has this pilgrimage done for you and your own catholicism?

>> he tells a story how a prostitute came up with three young kids and he gave food to the family. she said than thank you for thed but what i really want to thank you for is you always call me me señora. i thought, do i treat people with the same dignity? >> rose: you have a greater sense of dignity of other people and if a sense treat everybody with the same respect and same dignity. >> yes. >> rose: what else did it do? well, i meet tha guy in buenos ares who is a garbage collector and the pope invited to sit in the front section when he became pope. he invited a garbage collector, nun and a teacher. and the guy is there hugging the pope afterwards when he's taking off his clothes and i thought, if i could become governor of maryland or other big shot job, would i have the garbage

collector in the front row and would i be listening and learning from him like pope francis does? would i listen to him like an n.g.o., do i listen to the people i'm serving or do i want to merge with other n.g.o.s and get a bigger budget? he says don't merge, stay close to the poor and listen to the poor. serve with them not just for them and make me learn. that makes me think, i want to amass more power and get more political juice. he says don't do that. he's taking everything my mom and dad taught me and said, wow. my mother listens to people with developmental difficulties. my father had the unique ability to do that but i lost touch with that because i would rather be with you in this setting talk about stuff like this, but he's

saying don't be with the big shots, be in the fringes. >> rose: what do you want to do with the rest of your life. >> great question. did my wife ask you? >> rose: there are more. we'll get to the rest of them. ( laughter ) >> my answer is i want to make a difference for poor kids, in particular. early childhood education in this country, taking care of maternal child health internationally is a huge issue for save the children, and i still want to be in the political arena not as an elected official but rung this 501c4, so we're engaged in political races. >> you keep pulling it back to him. >> he's challenging me. >> rose: right. he's saying, don't worry about ideology because he doesn't fit in the box of conservative or progressive or leaning democratic or republicans. >> rose: but you used all of your connections to try to get an interview with the pope. >> i did. >> rose: and what happened? he turned me down. >> rose: why did he turn you down? >> he made the right choice. >> rose: tell me why he turned you down? >> he turned me down because as

goofy as it sounds in america, he doesn't care about his own public relations. i think he cares about his boss and his boss is jesus, and i think he is focused on that. and i think he probably looked at this and said the guy is writing about me, he's gone to argentina, talking to my friends, why do i need to talk to him. >> rose: the great friend is his cardinal from boston. >> cardinal o'malley. >> rose: very close to him, they say. >> cardinal vigino, the ambassador from the vatican to america, they all put in a good word and i went to rome and met with his press secretary. so i had a bunch of folks working on it. but he turned me down and should have. >> rose: did you get to meet him? you already met him? >> no. i got invited to a mass in santa marta chapel with my wife and three kids this summer after the book was written. we got to meet him and shake

hands with him. you spend four years ago studying the guy and he's ten feet away from you, and you feel you know him but you can't talk to him. >> rose: in the book you say, taken from him, who am i to judge, but a biographer is not to just. >> i'm on a quest biography. i'm trying to learn from him. >> rose: a quest biography, meaning you're trying to learn for yourself by looking at the life of another person. >> yes, and it's not -- look, if you're interested in what happened economically in 2001 to cause the recession, this isn't your book. if you want the hear about the people that were impacted by the 2001 recession, who learned from bergoglio, who had their children baptized outdoors by bergoglio, this is the book for you, because that tells a different story. >> rose: are you a different catholic now? >> am i a different catholic? >> rose: are you a different catholic.

in other words -- >> i think the answer is yes because i think he's made me more sensitive. i go back to that story of the homeless guy and i think that that intersection makes me more aware of people that are on the corner that, are you know, the waitress at the restaurant, the guy cleans out your garbage or my garbage at the end of the day in the office. you know, i talk to him and i think that that helps me, it helps them, and it make these little ripples of hope that bobbie kennedy talked about which i used to think would never make a big change, but those little interactions with the guy you talked about, he goes home and treats his wife and kids differently because you were kind to him, that's a ripple, then his kids do it the next day. humility and mercy is not practiced much in this country from our political or religious leaders. that's what makes the book so good. >> rose: "pilgrimage: my search for the real pope francis," mark marx. thanshriver.

thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> rose: will ahmed is the founder and c.e.o. of whoop, helps athletes achieve peak performance. the wrist band accumulates data at 100 times per second, measures and analyzes three key factors, recovery, strain and sleep. last week, the company announced findings from the largest study conducted in professional sports. 200 minor league baseball players participated over five months. evidence suggested a positive relationship between recovery levels in athletes and higher fast ball velocity and exit speed off the bat. please to have had will ahmed at the table for the first time. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: tell me how you came to create this device. >> yeah, absolutely. so whoop at its core, our mission is to unlock human performance. i got into this space because much like you i was interested in performance.

i was really interested in sports and exercise. so i was playing squash while at harvard, and i was surround bid athletes, myself included, who didn't really know what they were doing to their bodies. athletes overtraining, undertraining, misinterpreting fitness peaks, not understanding the importance of recovery or sleep. for me, i wanted to understand the human body. i did physiology research while at harvard. met with cardiologists and physiologists and in the process of reading a large number of medical papers, i came up with a thesis on how i thought you could better understand the body. >> rose: what did you learn about that? about what the body tells you about performance? >> what i learned is there are secrets that your body is trying to tell you that can help you with overtraining, that can help you with optimizing performance. but the fact of the matter, and this was six years ago when i was first doing this research, is that they couldn't be monitored. there is nothing in the space that was able to do this kind of data collection.

so i was able to partner with my co-founders john capalupo, our ct o. >> rose: chief technical officer? >> exactly. his father is the professor of exercise physiology and he was studying the hardest math class in the country at harvard. we had to have lap and he had the technical chops from the engineering standpoint and i had a vision of how it could work with coaches and athletes. the third co-founder understood mechanical engineering. >> rose: five sensors that take in data 100 times per second and measure heart rate. what does that tell you? >> by looking at heart rate over the course of the day, in particular earl violations relative to you baseline, you can start towns cardiovascular strain throughout the day.

our focus is the relationship between strain and recovery. if your body is run down and you've got a lower recovery, we think you should take on less strain. if your body has a higher recovery, we think you should take on more straifnlt when there is an imbalance and your body is run down and you take on a lot of strain, it's a sign of overstraining. five metrics, heart rate, heart rarity variability, ambient temperature and touch. >> rose: motion and movement and scan response. >> yes. >> rose: so we have five. heart rate, heart rate variability ambient temperature, motion and movement and skin response. so sensors are taking in data about thanks yes. >> rose: that tells you what about strain? tells you about the strain impacted on your body? >> yes, we want to understand the intensity of your overall day, what kind of cardiovascular strain have you put on your body and as a result of that what does your body need to do to

recover people. >> rose: i assume rest. yes, yes. and that's the missing ingredient for a lot of athletes. so we designed whoop to try to live a step ahead of an individual or a team. so you wake up in the morning with the recovery, and that recovery is telling you how capable your body is of taking on strain. and then over the course of the day, you accumulate strain and that could be in the form of exercise or stress or daily activity and, at the end of the day, we look at the strain accumulated on your body and we say this is how much sleep you need for tonight in order to recover for tomorrow. >> rose: who's the target audience. >> today whoop worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletes, olympians, pockets of the military and more recently released a product to the public that i think is targeting your aspirational athlete. so i think there is a large number of people between your professional athletes and maybe the step counters of the world that want to better understand

performance and want to perform at a higher level. you think about high school athletes who are aspiring to be collegiate or even professional athletes, you think about the people who work out at the various fitness cults every day or even your endurance competitors, runners, swimmers, try athletes, marathoners, these are all people that i think are held together by a strong degree of competitiveness, right, and i don't think there is been a technology or brand, for that matter, that's speaken to that audience yet today. >> rose: what was the major league baseball study? >> the major league baseball approach they were looking for, the best technology to understand player health, right? >> rose: right. grueling season, lot of games. it's important to be able to categorize what your athletes are doing to their bodies. major league baseball approached us, deemed we had technology capable of monitoring performance, and we said let's

start with a couple of teams. it snowballed because there was so much interest. we ended up with nine different organizations, 28 different locations, 28 teams in the minor league, 230 athletes, sonded up being the largest study conducted in sports. >> rose: so you can measure the body and figure out how to reduce strain, maximize recovery and add something to the release of the bat. >> we saw a direct correlation to how recovered baseball players were and how fast they were pitching. we saw how recovered baseball players were and how they were hitting the ball, so exit ball velocity. the fascinating thing was travel. everyone travels. we saw the athletes who were traveling for away games were on average spending an hour less time sleeping than the athletes at home. >> rose: right. as a result, the home teams were open average about 10% better recovered.

conventional wisdom says the home team wins because they have the fans behind them or in the statement stadium. >> rose: you're saying because they're getting more sleep. >> i think so. >> rose: the question is how do you add more sleep to travelers. >> the most powerful thing is by monitoring their bodies, athletes understand how much sleep they need. so they go from thinking of themselves as athletes 24-7. that's something the high performers, when you read about sleep habits, is so powerful. the sensor itself. >> rose: show me this. this is it. >> yeah. it's really easy to wear, super light weight. so you can see here's the sensor. >> rose: hold it up to the camera. >> here's the sensor itself. news measuring five sensors, 100 times a second. what you can see is its largely material, charlie, so it's likely lightweight, easy to water. what we also did is invented a

modular charger, so we wanted this to be something that you never needed to take off. there is so much value in continuous data. so what we did is invented this modular charger, and you slide this on to your strap and by wearing this for 60 minutes you have battery life for two days. >> rose: thanks for coming. pleasure to be here. >> rose: thanks for joining us see, you next time. for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com.

captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

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