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tv   Charlie Rose  PBS  May 28, 2013 11:00pm-12:01am PDT

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>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with a look at cybersecurity and china. joining us david sger of "theew york mes", david mart ofcb news and former fbi deputy director philip mudd. >> i think the most important message that its president's probably going to have is that cyberissues, whether it's cybersecurity, cyberespionage, whether or not it's possible to come to some kind of an agreement between the united states and china, how to limit the use of these weapons, that these have moved it from the periphery of the u.s. china relationship where they really were even a year or two ago. and they have now moved to the center. >> rose: we conclude way convertion dow not want to mi it is with siren robinson, not only is he the
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person who has been voted number one among all the ted talks, he's also written a book for you called finding your element, how to discover your talents and passions and transform your life. >> if you look at the odds of you being here at all, then really strikes me as sad that people settle for so little along the way. i know people have desperate circumstances, sometimes. i mean i-- i don't do all the old soldr thing about this. but i thk what really maers most is not what happens to you but what you make of what happens. >> rose: tomorrow night on this program, a look into the future. my conversation with david carp, the 26-year-old founding c.e.o. of microblogging platform and social networking web site tumblr. >> tas owe our mission to keep every day, find new ways to stretch that canvas and get people, those most aspiring creators, those most talented creators mohr room to make their best work. you think about the role technology has played in
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enabling those most creative people and pushing art and mediforward. ok awhat technology has done for film and something like pixarment i means that's an unbelievable thing that cout hve existed before that technology. and that's-- the lynniaj. >> rose: what do you think because of tumblr. >> 105 million creators who set up their homes on tumblr, the more than 55 billion posts across a whole swathe of genres and media and categories. so things like illustraters, whole communities of brilliantly talented illustrate, amator, also independent journalists, people like cj chifers robert rice who publish through tumblr and find an audience. >> so sharing stories and photographs, they are sharing their creativity. >> they are sharing their work. >> rose: but first when we continue tonight, cyberespionage, a look at china and the united states with david martin of cbs,
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david sanger of the "new york times" and philip mudd, former fbi and cia official. funding for charlie rose was provided by the following kohl viii
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captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> re:resident obama is due to meet th presint jinping in california t will be the first summit between the two leaders. earl earlier today china president said he is ready to explore a new type of relationship. one source of increasing tension is cyberespionage. today's "washington post" carried the headline key u.s. weapon designs hacked. officials point finger at china. earlier today white house press secretary jay carney con firm-- confirmed cybersecurity will be on the agenda at summit. joining me david sanger from the "new york times", david martin national security coespondent for cbs news and from memphis, philip mudd, a former deputy director of national security at the fbi an counterterrorist center of the cia.
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i am pleased to have all of them on this program. let me go to david martin, tell me david, this "washington post" story we all read today and you guys all know the background of the report, but what is the significance of what we're looking at here in terms of u.s. skat stuart. >> there are two things, one, the list of compromised weapons and technology, by my account there are 58 systems on that list. everything from the newest jet fighter to still undeveloped technologies like electromagnetic rail guns. and that is simply being stolen from clas find pentagon and defense contractor networks. so that's a compromise of secrets. but the other thing in this report and which i actually find more alarming is e
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degree to which u.s. military operations are dependent on networks which are vulnerable to cyberattack. and they actually say in this report that pentagon red teams have taken tools available to anyone on the internet and used them to conduct cyberattacks against u.s. military exercises. and in almost every case they just have to stop the exercise because it has disrupted it so badly. so that's what as the port saysif a few smart people working with tools available to everyone can create that much damage, what do you think a high level government attack coming from the other two main competitors, china and russia would look like. >> and do i also understand that we do not at this time have the tools to thwart this kind of invasion? >> they say in this report
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that you're never going to be able to defeat the top level attacks, the most sophisticate add tacks and that your only real defense against those attacks is a good offense. in other words, have the ability to retaliate in a way that would destroy things that those attackers hold valuable. >> rose: a kind of reminder of-- destruction. >> well, exactly. this is nuclear deterence all over again. it's cyberdeterence. you can make a case that the emergence of cybettacks is the first really different weapon since the atomic bomb. and what i think is happening now is that govement is going through the same thing that it went through in the 40s and 50s. the scientists have invented this incredible new capability. and now the people that
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manage government, the executives, the politicians, the statesmen are trying to figure out how to keep these weapons from being used. >> rose: david sanger, how do you assess this? >> wel, i think that david's exactly right. we're in this remarkable era that is probably most analogous, charlie, to that period between 1945 when the united states first dropped the bomb and hiroshima and nagasaki and sometime around 49 or 50 when the soviets got it and we were beginning to think about deterence. and deterence, the analogy to nuclear is an important one to bear in mind. but you can also erduthe analogy because the fact of the matter is it is not just states that have cyberweapons. gangs can have them, criminal groups can have them. and deterring them is very different from trying to deter a state.
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that said, for the intrusions that david just described, you have to be a little bit careful here, i think, to distinguish between compromise or intrusions and actual theft. what i thought was interesting about the defense science board report was it didn't find any particular evidenc that any of these systems other than perhaps the f-35 where the chinese had actually got answer hold of these designs. but they had been inside the computer systems. and i think that tells you something very important. in the world of cyberespionage, we have to get accustomed to the fact that you can't build a wall high enough to keep people out. and you don't want to keep people out. the whole idea of computer networks is to have interchange or cross borders with different people. the question is once they're inside your system, can you manage what they do wit it. so blding a wall the old firewall concept, i think people are coming to the conclusion really isn't the way to go. you need a system that is
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resilient enough that once people are inside, you can limit their damage. >> so you quarrel with the word compromise. >> the word compromise is fine. compromise is different than theft. so you know, we knew that there were chinese groups that were inside "the new york times" system. we talked about this a few months ago, back in the fall. but we don't have any evidence tt they manilated news stories as they were in the editing. did we want them there? no. and fortunately i think at least for now they're gone from there. >> okay. >> rose: i hear you in terms of definition. so phil, any doubt in your mind whose's doing this? >> no, not much doubt. i think it would be difficult in some cases to prove in a court of law but i done think anybody in the business would have a question about what's going on here. the one or two things i would add is first the story you're referring to i think hits the nail on the head in terms of talking about military technology it don't get into industrial
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secrets and intellectual property which is an equal problem in this country. the only other thing i would say is i think we're sort of at the model t stage of this problem. that is we're looking at a basic vehicle that is cyberattacks without knowing where we're going to be in 30, 40, 50 years but i think we'll look back even in ten years and laugh at the rudimentariary nature of what we are seeing today, it is going to explode. >> rose: let's think about the chinese is it from the government. i mean, who's doing? >> my judgement this is largely government. but you'll hear people say, you know, you can try to do this from the private side as well. you know kids sitting around a college dormitory figuring out how to get around a pentagon system. that happens in america as well. >> rose: assuming the china reese are doing it, i assume their tent is to be able to narrow the gap between america's military capacity and their mill father capacity? >> i think that's only part of intent. part of what's going on here is sucking up massive volumes of data from the u.s. government defense
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systems, for example. from private companies and then once you get those masses of data you're sorting through it sort of like an old addict saying what if this is useful in the future. i don't think they always know what they're going to do with the stuff that they're stealing. >> david? >> if you look at the list, you can see a theme to some of these systems that were compromised. and what they have in common is that they are weapon systems or technologies that are related to the obama administration's specific pivot. weapons that like the f-35, like the new navy warship that's being stationed in singapore, all of these systems that are designed to give the u.s. a greater military presence in the pas civic were, of course, the main competitor is china. and finding out about these systems allows china either to develop similar systems
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or to start working on ways to defeat them. >> what dow expect the president will say to the chinese president when they meet in palm springs? >> wel, i think it will be a diplomatic way of explaining that two can play at this game if you want to do it this way: we can do it nice or we can do it rough. >> david sanger? >> i think the most important message that the president's probably going have for xi jinping is that cyberissues, whether it's cybersecurity, cyberespionage, whether or not it's possible to come to some kind of an agreement between the united states and china, how to limit the e of these weapons, that these havesed fromhe riphery of the u.s. china relationship where they really were even a year or two ago and they have now moved to the center. i think the evidence for this, charlie s that the biggest supporters of the u.s. china relationship which is the business
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community, the u.s. china business council and others, have begun to protest the daley barrage of chinese cyberespionage and cyberexploitation. i think the big fear in the obama administration is that it then moves on to what david st eluded to inhis sortf taet lt of weapons systems. the chinese are looking to move up the technology scale but they're also looking for inexpensive, assymetrical ways that they can try to neutralize the united states's huge military advantage. and cyberis the way to do that if they can blind the satellites in the sky or neutral size om-- neutralize some of those new ships and aircraft. >> there's one thing that's not in this report by the defense science board. and that's the espionage, the cyberespionage that the u.s. may conduct. and there's no mention of the u.s. offensive
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capabilities in cyberwar except for one line that says the u.s. leads all other countries in offensive cybercapabilities. so this, the report gives you the impression that this is a totally one-sided fight. and i think if we were to know everything that was going on out there in cyberworld it would not look like a one-sided fight. >> rose: david sanger, that whayou write about. thas rit. and you know, the most successful, sustained state use of cyberweapons so far that we know about is-- was the program called olympic games which resulted from the-- virus that was used against iran's nuclear enrichment program. i wrote about at some length last year. and the united states has still never acknowledged the operation. because they are perfectly happy acknowledge ashil notebefore thathe u.s.
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has a significant cyberoffensive capability. and they're hoping that the knowledge of that offensive capability will be enough to be a deterrent. that probably won't work by itself. and you know, one of the things the united states and china have in common is that both countries deny that they conduct cyberoffensive action while there is considerable evidence that both countries conduct it. and they're not going to have a serious conversation on this subject until both countries get to e point of acknowledng that they do cyberoffense even if they do it in very different ways. >> here's the other question. if, in fact, they can compromise the national security apparatus, how easy would it be to compromise something like our electric grid and those kinds of things that would have a huge impact. anybody, david martin? >> well, the-- this report again makes the point that
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cyberattacks can create damage on the order of a nuclear attack. it's not going to cause the same physical destruction, it's not going to cause the same loss of life but a coordinate add tack against the banking system, the transportation system, the electrical grid would throw this country into chaos. and the only good thing you can say about it is that the countries that have the capability to do that also have an infrastructure that defend-- depends on computer networks which are probably equally vulnerable to that kind of cyrattk. so there is this mutual assured destruction. >> probably there is one other good piece of good news here too. which is the chinese are invested in the united states to the tune of several trillion dollars. so to attack american infrastructure for china would impose a huge cost on china. i mean the economic impact of it would redound on them
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within days. in that regard, i worry about those who aren't invested in the u.s. think about iran, north korea, we just don't have anywhere near china's skis the russn skills, but have no real disincentive to do an attack the way the chinese or russian was. >> david, i seem, i believe that you suggest that anything they can do we can do better? >> well, for now. but-- you know, the fact of the matter is that other countries are coming up in their skills in a very big way. and we don't understand yet what the administrations rules of engagement are here for when the.sould counterattack. we know that we have been told by people in the pentagon that the president would have the authority to order a counterattack if there was a big attack on american infrastructure. but we don't know if that
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would be cyberonly or if he would use conventional military capability because there was a cyberattack launched on the u.s. and-- is a big issue. in the old world of the nuclear deterrent you could sit in a big bunker in colorado and see where the misse was coming i from. >> right. >> when the cyberattack happens, it may look like it's coming from romania. it may look like it's coming from the american university in the south. it's all a cutout and you're not quite sure who to retaliate against when there were big attacks on the south korean banks a few months ago, it took the south koreans a month or so to actually attribute the attack to north korea. >> phil, how high a priority is this for the united states? >> it's been high for years and i think getting higher. if you look for example the fbi director and his talk about threat, he talks about cyberthreat as much or more as he talks about terrorism that is transition only in
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the two twoo three years, not necessarily because terrorism is obviously not an insignificant problem. but because the cyberintrusions were facing on both the defense and commercialside are just becoming overwhelming. >> uh-huh. >> david martin my understanding is that obama has been focusing on this for a while now. and that he's made it a priority for his own definition of national security. >> well, i track things from a very narrow perspeive at the pentagon. and to me what is said they're serious is when they created the cybercommand. >> exactly. >> and put one person in charge of the command. it used to be just spread throughout government, everybody was responsible but nobody was in charge. now there's one guy, keith alexander, lieutenant general who is in charge of cybercommand. and that is what the military always strifes for which is the so-called unity of command. >> leon panetta said in testimony before congress, i
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think maybe at his confirmation as secretary of-- defense secretary that he thought the next parallel may very well be a cyberattack. >> you know, here's my problem with that. not that that might not be true. but there is so much secrecy around cyberwarfare that he doesn't tell you anything else but that, the next attack could be a cyberpearl harbor, cyber9/11. and i personally don't think people are going to believe it until they see it. and you know, much like we didn't believe in our hearts outside the intelligence community that bin laden was a mortgageal threat to the united states. -- mortal threat to the united statesment i don't think we're going to believe it until we see a devastating atack of some sort on the united states. >> david, thank you so much for joining us. last word, phil, where do we go from here. >> sure. >> one of the questions is what u.s. commercial
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enterprises do. in addition to what the "washington post" story talked about today f you are running a major commercial enterprise as a former government offial, i would nt you to be out talking about the threat as a shareholder, i might be saying the more you talk about the threat and intrusion in our systems the more my share goes down. there is going to be an interesting balance in the commercial world between getting open on this problem and protecting shareholder value. >> david sanger? >> where do we go from here. >> i agree. i agree completely with phil and one of the big problems the u.s. government has had is getting companies to report what they're seeing because this is andd diffencerom t old military threat where most of the targets in the united states are actually in private hands. stock markets, utilities, banking, media organizations. and many of them wait weeks or months to report what's happening. and as a result the
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government is somewhat blindsided. the other coming problem i think, charlie, is you're going to see some companies begin to ask the question can they retaliate themselves. so if they're attacked by what they believe to be a chinese server corporation they counterattack. and that's how you could get into a large conflict without the white house or the pentagon or the cia even knowing that it had started. >> rose: thank you so much, pleasure. >> thank you. >> rose: chau. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> sir ken robinson is here. he is a leading thinker in the development of creativity, innovation and human potential. his 2006 ted talk about scol kling creativity is the most viewed ted talk in the organization's history. my god. here is a look. >> now i don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. what we do know is if you are not prepared to be wrong,
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you will never come up with anything original. if you are not prepared to be wrong. and by the time they get to be adults most kids have lost that capacity. they have become frightened of being wrongment and we run our companies, we stigmatize mistakesment and we're now running national education systems where stakes are theorst thing you can make. and the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. picasso once said that. he said that all children are born artists. the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. i believe this passionate that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. or rather we get educated out of it. >> his new book is called finding your element, how to discover your talents and passions and transform your life. i'm very pleased to have sir ken robinson at this table. welcome. >> pleasure. rose: great to you have he. >> trulyre tbe here. thank you. i have so much to ask. first of all, explain yourself there, sir.
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if you are's not prepared to fail, you're not prepared to be creative. >> i don't mean to say that if you make mistakes that is infallably a creative thing to do. >> rose: people don't set out to make mistakes. >> but every creative process has deadends, false starts, may take you down a path that sun productive. a friend of mine won the nobel prize for chem streechlt i emphasize that i did not, but he did. and i asked him how many of his experiments failed. and he said probably 90% of them. >> re: tt trl an error or more. >> he said its a-- failure is not the right word. he said what you are finding out is what doesn't work. and you see that when people are composing music, writing scripts, designing buildings, you rarely get it right the first time so if you are stigmatized for getting wrong t is a big deterrent. >> rose: you just see that, it's the way life is because you can't know everything. and you can't-- if you are not prepared to go that way-- then you will not find anything that is worth finding. >> yes. i think that's generally true as well about how people conduct their own
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lives. 's why i argue that creativity is fundamental. because we create our own life. and you can re-create it. >> rose: does life beat it out of us. >> it does sometimes. there's no question of it. i think people can sometimes get so worn down into their own groove, they think there's no alternative. i to emphasize that most people's resumes are entirely improbable. you didn't have this in mind, did you. >> rose: knock, i did not. hi no idea. it's a hundred times bigger, better, more interestg than er imagined. >> what did you have in mind originally. >> rose: god, i didn't have a plan, you know. i started as a lawyer and one thing lead to an other. and i didn't have a plan. i just had a need in me to -- >> to what. >> rose: to do something interesting, you know. >> yes, whatever. >> rose: whatever that was. someone once said to me, i think just what you just said. you know, that the process of creativity is about
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choosing. >> yes. >> rose: you come to a road, you choose. you come to another road, you choose. >> that's right. i think your life is actually made o choices yomaker turn away from. >> rose: exactly right. as someone wisely said on your last breath, you regret what you didn't do rather than what you did. >> yes, that's right. actually i have some-- . >> rose: that was you, maybe. >> as i take my last breath. why did i do that. no, but i -- know when i was at school. the things i liked, i liked latin. i didn't see any great future in that. i just enjoyed it. >> rose: what did you enjoy about latin. >> the sort of puzzle and the elegance of it and the ct that it helped me understand english. >> rose: ed history. >> it was interesting to see the roots of english words. and i love french. actually, i love the french teacher. yeah, it's a long story. >> rose: often is.
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>> but he was sophisticated this is liverpool in 1960s. people often said he had the suit and it was his suit which was unusual, not his dads. >> rose: hi a fabulous latin professor who gave me this really wonderful book when i graduated from college. d i ought this i- sa thing this is really a wonderful man who i had great admiration for, never lost sight of him but he was just really quite amazing and he taught me some sense about an appreciation of all things cultural. >> yeah. >> how did he do that? >> i done know. >> by example. >> rose: probably. just by an expression of life. >> i gave a talk recently, i got asked to do a lot of these things. but what is interesting about it is you never quite know where you're going to show up. orho might a you. and you take the ones that look really interesting. and i was invited by, called the unit states and canadian association of pathologists. and i was asked to give the keynote at their 100th anniversary.
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>> rose: i am not surprised. >> i am not known in the field of pathology. i didn't think so, i didn't think so but they're a wonderful group of people. they said they want approximated me to talk about innovation because they felt their field is being bound with red tape and really unproductive. and at the end of these talks, often the chairman offersou ft of some sort, a small tok. offered me a free autopsy which i thought was lovely. i said i'm good for the time being. i haven't cashed it in. but here's the field-- . >> rose: so what did you tell him. >> it is a field of which i knew nothing. >> rose: you didn't talk about your field. >> i talked about innovation generally, that is what they want. they wanted to talk about what it is that drives work forward. and as much in the sciences as in the arts, a willingness to break with convention to see beyond what you take for granted, and they felt also some of the bureauctic ctures that are enveloping their field, like they are in education, are
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counterproductive. there is a time when as i gathered from the conversation, a trained pathologist in a hospital, of course they do much more than autopsies. they are examining every sort of tissue. >> right. >> but there is say time when a pathologist could sign off on pretty much most things that came across-- i don't know if it came across their desk but whatever it they came across they could sign off on it. >> their table. >> but they're having specialized mo and more. i'characterizing a but it was a b like this guy over here can do kidneys, the gallbladder but they can't do the bit in the middle. they found there was a real tendency for this field to innovate to remove the professional judgement and discretion of the person doing the work. but i mean that say larger issue, it is true in a lot of organizations. it's certainly true in education. but what was really fascinating to me was just how much they loved it. they just loved what they do. >> rose: what was it about it that they loved.
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>>hey-- the knowledge that th're helping people, they're helping to cure diseases, that their work is essentially productive and positive. they're intrigued by the science, they're solving puzzles all the time. if somebody has a condition, it's very unlikely to be only-- in the site where it occurred. if somebody those a javelin into you, well, you probably don't want to start drinking chamomile tea and hope it wears offer. i think we can be fairly specific. it's probably the javelin. but for organic problems that peoplhave, a-- . >> rose: search and find. >> it's a systemic thing very often so it's search and find so i can't speak for them but there is a whole deckive part of this. >> rose: forensics became a huge popular thing on television just because the phenomenon search and find it was a puzzle. >> it's a puzzle. >> rose: solve the puzzle and you'll get your man or woman. >> and they're dealing with living tissues. so i am saying here was a
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group of people who were passionate, of course they are. they think the sciences are all to do withold blooded, clinical, algorithm mick decision taking that pops out at the end but all the scientist i know are driven by a love of what they do. they are excited by it and it's a deeply creative field. >> rose: every time, i have done two brain theories here at this table. 12 episodes each. >> this very table. >> rose: this very table. and all of them, you know, i end each session with 24 of them now, each session with so tell me what's the one question you most want answer. d they lig up. because they think about the unknown. and they think about their lives work. and they think about all the things that make them do what they want to do to find the answer to the questions they don't know. >> that's exactly right. michael, the philosopher talked about that, about intellectual passions, a science, i was talking years
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ago to a mathematician. and i asked him how you would assess a ph.d in pure math. i have never seen such a thing. i used to supervise doctoral programs in the humannities but math wasn't m song suit. ani saidow how would you assess one. a ph.d in pure math. presumed it's right. you know, you would be fairly depressed if you spend five years doing a ph.d of pure math, it comes back wrong. >> rose: right, right. >> and he said there are two criteria for mathematics. the first is original nal-- original nality, whether or not it breaks new ground in its field that is the point of creativity. people often say you can't assess creativity. it's simply not true. what y have to understand, i say to them s that you can't be creative unless you are doing something. and therefore you apply the criteria that are relevant to what it is you are doing. if you are looking at a ph.d
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in pure math are you not trying to judge it against the criteria of-- does it count as an original contribution. so he said original nationality, how creative is, not fanciful but how much it breaks new ground. but the other thing i loved, he said it's aesthetic. >> i said why does that tter. he said it's the beauty of the proof. i said why does that matter. he said because mathemattixes have a powerful belief that mathematics is one of the purest way wes have of describing the truths of nature. since nature is inherently beautiful, the infew significance that the more elegant the proof, the more likely it is to be true. >> rose: i have often said or believed or asked this question s there some similarity between math and music. >> yes. >> rose: some beautiful, perfect surrnd. >> y. rose: or oking for a peect, beautiful formula that in its as threat sick so pristine and beautiful in
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the way it defines. >> yes. >> rose: something. whether it's love of music or whether it's an answer in math. >> yes. i think the exact parallel. he could be talking about a sonata or poem or a dance or a building. i remember following this question up, i said why do you think people struck well mathematics. and i was interesting answer. he said it is a linguistic problem. he said they don't speak math. and what he meant was, my frch is kind of l right. i mean i wouldn't have sat down and debated with proust for very long. but i can order a croissant and get one, and actually get one, without gravy on it. >> rose: if your french is that one,. >> pretty good. without potato chips with it but he said that in-- i think music is a good parallel. if you don't read music, if you don't really read it,
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when are you given apage full of music what you see is a puzzle. it's a visual puzzle. he's trying to figure it out, a form of illiteracy. you can't decode it. but a musician who is fluent in music sees a page and they hear a symphony. notation is translucent it takes them straight to the music. and it is the same with mathematics. most people look at mathematical formula and scratch their heads because they're not really fluent. they have phrasebook math, like my proust. but a mathematician will look at it and hear a sympho. they will se straight through the notation to this world of ideas that it helps to conjure up and to make sense of. i love that. because it speaks to the unity of how we think and create. >> rose: one of the interesting things, what you do and what i do to a different degree, it is, if you ask people things like that, simple questions why, what was if about that, what was the beauty of that, what
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was-- they love to talk about it. because it makes them think in a way that normal discourse never occurs to ask them. family doesn'tsk them. famy member sitess dinner table and says explain to me. they don't do that. they talk about the day, who you met, what you did. how was your day, how was so and so, did you see this but it's not about the essence of being. we don't have those conversations, so if someone from the outside comes and asks, ah. >> i really do find that interesting. of course i'm not being a ludite about the technology, but it's even harder to have those conversations if people are actually sitting there doing this. >> rose: exactly t is. >> all this clatter inthe background ofconsaint noise, i think it's a problem. >> rose: it's just amazing to me. you can't go anywhere where they are to the doing that. nowhere. >> yeah. >> rose: finding your element, how to discover your talents and passions. let's stop there. how do dow that? how do you find your-- first of all how do you know what your own element is. or do you have to sort of
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rummage around to find it? >> well, it varies for different people. the what i mean is sdooing something where you feel are you most authentic or natural, like i was made for this i have remarked, i'm sureou he, of all the people you met and worked with, that some people go through their lives not enjoying what they do at all. >> rose: the majority. >> they get through the week there is a lot of evidence and research out there about well-being, about the spread of depression. i was reading the other week that sales of anti-psychotic drugs which used to be available only on prescription for people with clinical disorders, i gather, are now outselling drugs for acid reflux in the u.s.. >> rose: yes. >> i mean you don't have to look far to see that people are down. i'm not-- >> rose: this is a very serious matter. >> a big matter. you look at the abuse of drugs, alcohol, food. >> rose: out of an unhappiness with their life. >> i would make that judgement.
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and certainly from the people i know and i'm aware of, i think that's what it is. >> rose: but is that the way life is? i mean not everybody can find a job that is-- i was going to say, i'm not claiming that every-- everyone that found their element would solve all social problems but it would help. what i mean is a lot of people get through the week and trundle along anwait for the weekend. but i also meet people, and you would be one of them, who love what they do. they couldn't imagine doing anything else. they get up in the morning and think great, another day doing this fantastic. >> rose: i can't wait to see everything that has been written overnight, every experience people had so i can figure out which is the most interesting to me so i can put it at this table that is my life. >> and it is fantastic life to haven't have, isn't it and you probably think and they're paying for me, really, really? when do they catch on? but i find that when i'm doing book signings for this and therevious one, you got mome witpeop. you know when are you signing a book, you can't have a long discourse but
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normally long enough to say what do you do? i ask people if they like what they do? i tend to put it that way and it is amazing how hoff how often people say i love it, i love it. but other people might say it's all right. and you know that it's not, really. and it can be anything so that being in your element is two things. it's firstly, you know f you want to break down that general idea. first it's doing something that you are naturally good at. anthat you have feel for. d yokn, onof my arguments here is this is a kind of hint at die virts. because we're all good at very different things. i mean some people, did you used to play basketball. >> i did. >> i'm sure you walked on to the court and say i get this. >> it felt good to me. >> other people walk on and think really? but other people-- other people would walk into a ballet studio, and think here i am. my wife -- >> i didn't feel that. >> no, well there we gment
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and i'm trying to picture it even now. my wife and i he beening to for 37 years now. you can blame her. >> rose: no, of course not. >> i don't think so. no, she's fantastic, a wonderful teacher when she was teaching. but when she was at school, she loved ballet. but all the kids at school had to do hockey. so in england they would be out on the floor, like concrete, grass court like concrete. with people running at 20 miles an hour waving wooden clubs. it wasn't her idea of being in her element. and she said she could have coped th it if once a week they all had to go into the ballet studio which is where she felt at home so our talents are very diverse. >> so what did she do? >> she studied dance. she did music and she went on to teach. and then she started running her own pr company and now she's a novelist. and that's the thing, that the, you know, you can look back at this and say well it's an odd trajectory but
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everybody's trajectory is odd it only makes sense looking backward. >> rose: is your message to whoever you are, and whater are you doing, ask urself if, in fa, y feel passion about it, can't wait to do it, you love doing it, it brings you enormous psychic income as well as other kinds of income. is that true. and if it's not true, then my question is what do you do? >> well, you made the important point, being in your element is being good at something, being good enough. but it's more than that. because there are plenty of people without do things they're good at but they don't really care at. they are doing it because they happen to be good at it to be in your element, you have to love it if you love something you are good at. >> if i love it will i turn blue or what, how will i know? >> you will feel it. no but i talk a lot in this new book, finding your element about the back questions because people kept asking me, the first book came out and i didn't centre in mind a series or a franchise here. you know, i didn't call this the first of ten books. i'm on to something here it
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was just i thought-- . >> rose: you didn't see 10. >> i just saw this book. and it was partly prompted because i just observed throughout my whole life i see people going through their education, some of them feel that they found what they want, lots of people are wandering around in the wilderness, not quite knowing wh they are going to do now. and i s interested in this difference, and the difference it made. so i spoke to lots of people about how they got to that point. and my-- then people kept sairing this is great. that's mainly this said this is great. but how do i find my element? and you know for a year or skoi said buy another copy of the book. read it outloud. but i really knew i owe them an answer. the things to say. so that's what this book is about. and i'm really saying it's a two way journey. coming back to what we were saying earlier, to find your element you have to know more aut yourself, yo ve tdig down a bi because it seems human resource, human talents are like the world's natural resource, often beneath the surface, you don't know until you come across they you need opportunities to find them. you need to spend time.
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a lot of people underestimate that talent. >> rose: i wish there were more people looking to help you find that too. people who were basically, i mean i've interviewed lots of world-class athletes. they had talent. and somebody spotted the talent. >> yes. >> rose: and said i want that ted williams, why baseball. and i said baseball because he said when i was very young, i did it, somebody saw me do it well. and they said dow this with. i wanted to do more. and i got more applause, i wanted to do more. that kind of thing. >> yeah. >> rose: these people who are world-class athletes, they showed that talent and somebody was there to say, you know, you're an athlete, not a chemist, an athlete. you have talent. >> yeah. >> rose: and if you give someone the opportunity to explore the talent. >> yeah. >> rose: and demand that they form, then. >> it matter enormously. often other people see our talents before we do. and the reason i think we take for granted our own tants. we think if ican dit, anybody can do this. also you have got a thing for it.
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>> exactly right. that is absolutely true, they will come and say you have got something special. first of all, you don't necessarily have already known that. secondly, you don't flow what it is. >> that's right. so the first thing is that. it's aptitude. aptitude are the things we're born with. but it's also about passion. what i mean by passion is, i don't mean you have to go around with a rose clenched between your teeth, it's not like that. it's the things that you find yourselfoving doing. and there are a lot of ways of telling it. i think of this as spiritual argument. i done mean that in a religious sense. i mean that there is a difference-- i think a degree between physical energy and spiritual energy. the sense in which are you in good spirits or low spirits, high or up. and some activities you can do them, if you don't care for them, at the end of the week, you maybe physically in good shape but down, just depleted. if you do things you love,
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you may be physically exhausted by it, but on a complete high. >> exaly. >> because it's feeds you. activity does that they feed our energy, they don't take it for from us if you like it. >> if you look at a bruce springstein concert, he gives you everything he has. elies at the end exhausted because he said i'm going to entertain you. i'm going to give you everything i have and more. >> yes. >> and i bet we says too, i bet, somebody else would look at that and think you must be exhausted. how did you do that day after day. i bet we say because i get energy from it. >> exactly rig. >> it builds me up. i dr frothe audience energy and feed it back to them. it's that human quality to this that matters so much. it's about living a life that is fulfilling. i remember, i did an event a couple of years ago, a peace summit in vancouver. it was called -- >> peace summit. >> it was called the vancouver peace summit. they're very good at titles. >> yes, they are.
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>> vancouver peace cement what is about it. >> it's about peace. >> and it's here. >> and its he a summit. >> but the guest of honor, i know you have met him,as the liama >> interviewed him many times, number of times. >> wonderful man, i think. so i was sharing the opening panel. there were eight of us on the panel. >> was the panel too big already. >> and the theme of the opening session was world peace through personal peace. so we had an hour. same person thoughts of the vancouver summit. >> that's something. but he said lots of wonderful things as he does. one of the things he said was to be born at all is a miracle. so what are you going t do withour life. >> age he's right, if you look at the odds of you being here at all, then really strikes me as sad that people settle for so little along the way. i know people have desperate circumstances, sometimes.
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i don't do the old soldier thing about this but i think what really matters most is not what happens but what you make of what happens. until i was four, i'm not putting myself as an example of this, i kind of know what i speak. until i was four, i was born into a large family in liverpool. not en i was four, when i was born. i was repeatedly born, we can redraft that a bit. but. >> rose: bet you were a big baby. >> born repeatedly until i was four until we got the hang of it. then my dad shout that i was going to be an -- thought i would be a soccer player. we live right next door to a soccer ground and it was the ambition of every family to have somebody play for it. >> there 1954 you recall there wer these epidemics that spread around the world, europe and america and i got it. so-- . >> rose: you got it. >> pollio, yeah. so i was the only one on the street to get it. the only one in the family
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but i went from being, my dad used to take me to the park we would run around, kicking this ball around he said i was fast and strong. dwlited. he said he's the soccer player. and i went overnight being completely paralyzed. i was hospital for eight months and came out on two brace, on crutches and in a wheelchair. i was unbearably kuchlt people spoaneously gave me moy inhe street it was very moving. in fact we lived on that for quite some time. but i went to the special education. and that could have been the ends of it. gaus although they were very good, they didn't have high expectations for people in special ed at the time. didn't even call it special ed, they called it school for the physically handicapped. they were less prone to euphemisms at the time. but hi a couple 6 wonderful teachers and they put me on my way and my parents really encouraged m d th knew iwasn going get a job doing manual work.
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i had to get educated but five years later completely randomly for no connect reason whatsoever, my dad who was working as an engineer, as a rigor had an industrial accident and broke his neck. sowa then paralyze, quadriplegic for the rest of his life. rses at what age. >> 45. until 63. he was a fantastic man, funny, smart, strong. the family all held together. the reason i'm saying it is that, i mean, it's not an uncommon story in a way that people have to deal wi stuff. and 's not in the end at happens to you that makes the big difference it's what you make of what happens to you, how you frame it and whether or not you go under with it or you feel you can pull up from it. and i'm saying i they that i most people's circumstances have more elbow room than they often believe. and i'm not just saying you should find your own for the job you do, because sometimes you can't make a living from the thing you love to do. sometimes you don't want to. but you should have some point in your life, in your week n your days where you feel this is who i am.
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you know, i'm connected to this. and it could be anything. but finding it is what the book is about. i think you owe it to yourself, is really what i am saying. and on a large level i think we have to reframe our education systems for the reasons you were saying to make this a more deliberate process rather than the occasional accident that benefits a few people. >> rose: educational system that in fact n my word was give wings to your creativity rather than -- >> i'm sure there are people when are you at school, am i right, teachers you remember. >> rose: sure. >> you mentioned one. >> rose: there was another, when i was growing up they were small ville in north carolinaiterally a hundred people and i'm old enough so that there was a book mobile that would come. >> i imagine you were that old, by the way. >> rose: you just look at me. >> i mean come on. >> rose: and they, and she just would-- i mean i was-- she was inspiring to me because she made me think that you know you're my number one reader. you are my number one
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reader. >> that's fantastic. >> rose: and so tlses was a connection between reading and learning. her caring for me, and all of that. this was a van that onhe street. >> rose: mobile library it wasn't a street t was the road. this is not liverpool. >> or manhattan. >> rose: no beatles down the street either, by the way. >> we didn't know they were there. >> rose: hank williams, maybe but no beatles. >> that's right. >> rose: so what is your passion. >> working with people. >> rose: really? >> yes. i've always felt that. and i think like you, it's ideas, trying to make sense of ideas. i think there's nothing so powerful as an idea. i'm not the first person to t that at all. the lives arehape i feel that strongly, that we don't, as human beings, unlike the rest of life, as far as we can tell, we don't live directly in the sensory -- sense ory world. values, concepts, frameworks
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and series, a lot of those implicit in our languages and our philosophies. and the great movements in human history of being when new ideas have come along and liberated people. there is nothing so liberating as a powerful idea. i have always been drawn to th the power of aginion d idsto transform how we see and think. but from an early stage i find myself being asked to talk about the things i was doing and i found i could and enjoyed it. >> i don't mean to say-- i got nervous. we all do. i mean all great sports people do. all-- people who take seriously what they do i always think-- you see tennis player, no matter how good they are they still have to bounce that ball four or five times before they serve it, some 10 or 12s on or try a few shots, people still miss an easy putt beuse youave to deal with that by always have found that i can come alive with people. i mean i like writing. to be truthful i like having written, you know.
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>> i often ask people what you want to do. and they say i want to be a writer. i say dow want to write or do you want to be a writer, there's a difference. >> terry, my wife is different. she loves writing. >> rose: is it tortorous for you. >> i get to it. and i love the process. i always-- do you remember peter cook, i think he was on that. >> he and david frost came out of cambridge. >> he was on that was the week that was. he did sketches. i think before, beyond the fringe, very funny guy, extraordinarily funny guy. he was-- at the reception once. and he stalked this man and said this guy-- what do you do? >> and this guy said i'm writing a novel. how interesting, neither am i. >> think that's great.
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>> okay, show me that novel when you've done it. >> so yes, i-- but if i'm been sitting working on my own all day, i used to teach in universities. i would come back and she could tell if i had been in committees all day. it's not my -- >> not mine either. >> it is a definition of eternity. >> rose: . >> if i have been working with people or at an event, she said i looked ten years younger t is that thing that gives you energy. i think it's that i love the energy of people. >> rose: the book lled finding your element, how to discover your talents and passions and transform your life. ken robinson, sir ken robinson, thank you. >> my pleasure. >> rose: pleasure to you have here. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time.
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captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org additional funding provided by these funders.
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