congress, and we will continue to have these conversations in the days ahead. president obama has always been in close touch with leaders of our key allies, and the president will be making an informed decision about how to to this indiscriminate use of chemical weapons. make no mistake. president obamas believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world's most heinous weapons against the world's most vulnerable people. nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny. thank you. >> secretary of state john kerry condemning the assad regime for its believed use of chemical weapons on his own people. kerry saying the attack should shock the conscience of the world. we want to get right to nbc's ayman mohyeldin in the region. what's your response to that? >> reporter: well, some very interesting points there from secretary of state john kerry.

among them, really, was laying out the argument for the use of chemical weapons over the course of the last several days. that was certainly something many people here were very critical about. obviously over the course of the last several days, the central question was, was it the syrian regime that used chemical weapons against its own people? what we heard from secretary of state john kerry were key points that lead to the conclusion that it was the syrian regime. among them, he cited the findings by the international nongovernmental organization doctors without borders that has repeatedly said they have treated hundreds of patients who had symptoms of neurotoxicity as a result of some type of agent dispersed in that area. more importantly, he said the syrian government is the only group that has custody of these types of chemical weapons. more importantly, they had demonstrated in the past that they wanted to wipe out that area or to wipe out the syrian opposition. in essence what you could read between the lines was a very

initial assessment by the united states that they believe this was an attack by the syrian government. you also heard from secretary of state another very important point, that the united states had information about this attack or had more information about this attack that it was sharing with its partners, and that information would be made public in the coming days. so the first initial reading was that this was an assessment by the united states in addition to what we're seeing on the ground, in addition to the eyewitness reports that have been coming out over the course of the last several days, that the syrian government was to be held accountable for what happens back on august 21st with that alleged chemical weapons attack. >> ayman, thank you. back in washington we have lieutenant colonel anthony schafer, a senior fellow and external communications director at the center for advanced studies and perry bacon, political editor at the grio. colonel, i feel like there's a number of variables in the situation. help me understand what you think are the more important dynamics and what dynamics, if

any, i'm completely missing out on. i think we have to consider the impact of iraq/afghanistan, that the country is in a sort of war fatigue. i think we have to consider russia, assad's key ally, as somebody holding us back from acting. i think we have to consider the rebels are not exactly people we may want to be working with. we don't know who the next dictator will be if we support them. also, just being the world's policemen has not gotten us as far as we'd like it to. what dynamics are a part of this? >> all of the above. there's a no-win scenario. it's really nowhere to go. the idea is we've decided to do something. what should that be? this is -- now, we have interceded in other places. we have invaded a country, panama.

a successful interdiction to prevent genocide. this situation is completely different. the russians, chinese, iranians are all part of this area. the best we can hope to do, the best we can hope to do militarily is to not use our military force directly. as you said, there's a fatigue. it's there. it's real. we need to be much more careful in how we apply military force. if we do, it has to be with nato, with turkey, with the jordanians in some form but having them lead and us support. i think we should continue to support the people of syria. they're been terrorized, there's no doubt. i want to see secretary kerry lay out the road plan or the grievances of what we might do. he didn't do that. i'm a little disappointed in his comments in that regard. >> yeah, when you talk about any kind of multilateral action, there's a lot of pressure from within the congress to do something. perry, what do you make of this as an observer of congress when you have right now a bit of a

co-mingling. i want to read one of the things we just heard secretary of state kerry say. this was a moral obscenity, and he wants the investigators here to gather the facts informed by conscience. obviously there's some fact finding to do. but this was, to my mind, the most explicit statement from the administration, meeting what some members of congress have been saying, which is this is not only a matter of humanitarianism but necessity. >> he said this international norm cannot be violated without consequences. those are important words. without consequences means the administration is now thinking about what those consequences will be. this was a very formal statement, kind of a list of all the -- kind of a bill, a list of all the things the syrians have done wrong. it wasn't the president, but having the secretary of state lay that out in those kind of

details tells you that now the u.s. is trying to figure out what to do. it will be doing something. the question is what to do. one of the challenges here, this is not like libya in 2001 where the pentagon was fairly certain a no-fly zone would be effective. you have a situation here where it's not clear there are any very good military options that will change the dynamics on the ground in syria. that's also causing the president to have some delay about what to do next. >> well, and lieutenant colonel, we're obviously going to hear more in the coming days about our response to what's going on. what we do know is the pentagon is making initial preparations for a cruise missile attack moving u.s. navy into the eastern mediterranean. so let's say this is the president's strategy, to take out certain targets involved in maki maki making chemical weapons. is this sustainable? >> this is something we should have considered a long time ago. the two problems with this

strategy is first off, if we miss, some of the chemical weapons may go missing, as in they'll get out into the public and other groups that may use them for other purposes. secondly, we should have been doing this a long time ago. now we're going to have to do it overtly. it's going to be in your face. the assad allies, such as russia, are going to take offense to it. as you stipulated, there's going to be secondary consequences, some of which we can't know, some of which we don't know. it's that issue, it's that unknown. to quote don rumsfeld, there's no knowns and unknown unknowns. we just don't know what the secondary consequences are going to be. there's no good military options at this point in time. >> well, and perry, as we consider, and as decision makers in washington consider what the consequences can might be, how much are they weighing the specter of iraq? how much is that weighing on the decision making in d.c.?

>> my understanding is not -- we're not sending ground troops into syria. that's not going to happen. in that way, there's probably not going to be a formal, long debate about a war and then an objection of military force. we're not talking about iraq here. we're talking more about the -- the administration is talking about kosovo one and libya two. a much more limited intervention. i don't think the iraq comparison is apt here. >> tony, jeff goldman in why the bloomberg" is quoting samantha power from her book that she wrote where she makes the case not just for the humanitarian reasons for intervening in a conflict such as what we're seeing in syria, but she also makes the case that there are strategic interests involved and she says citizens vik miezed by genocide or abandoned by the international community do not make good neighbors as their thirst for vengeance and their acceptance of violence as a

means of generating change can turn them into future threats. do you think that case for getting involved is applies here? >> that essentially is the theory of why we get into kosovo and that sort of thing. i'm not saying it's wrong. i'm saying if we do it, we have to define what exactly are our strategic and national interests. this isn't a country we have a lot of specific interest in working with. i think we have the obligation to support the syria of people as we would any people in distress. we cannot be the policemen of the world. this is why i was critical of secretary kerry's thing. if he laid out a bill of goods, specific treaties we feel were being violated, specific things we must own up to, we are part of nato, that could be a loophole we could use to be doing more militarily. we have to define what our interest interests are. we have to have a policy debate. congress should definitely be involved. we have to figure out, as the american people, what's best for us going forward in this

situation. >> i want to push you beyond the policy dilemma and part of what's happening on the ground. secretary kerry made a direct reference to videos in social media, his words, that he himself has been watching and obviously are being viewed in and around syria, even with, as we know, some restrictions on access to certain websites. this is a huge and different way that people in this community and around the middle east are understanding the pain, the killing. we know in the context of egypt in the run up to the arab spring that video footage of certain people hurt by the mubarak government was a huge catalyst and that was what led to one of those larger facebook groups. tell us what you think is different here, especially compared to your experience decades ago, in the fact that some of this video or surveillance is really mass accessible to look at these

atrocities. >> who's that question to? >> tony. >> oh, yeah. well, we had the same issue in bosnia. let's remember we saw horrific, horrific images coming out of there. we had assassinations. we had constant death. with that said, we have to separate emotion from action. we have to again think rationally through this. again, this is a situation where there's very little upside for us to be involved. i think we have to deal with our allies. we have to deal with the circumstance. unlike libya, we should not go about destroying the country. we need to sustain the nation itself. we cannot destroy the regime, the government of syria. we do not want to see it in a failed state like libya. we have to walk a fine line. we have to support the people. we have to see assad, if we can, go on. we have to do that very carefully. i would say aggressively in some less than military means. there's things we can do. not a lot of things overtly. >> i think we have ayman back with us. i want to toss a question to you, sir. obama likes to go into these foreign countries with other

countries supporting him and not just go it alone, most of the time. so what sort of coalition will he need to pull with him to be able to affect change and help the rebels, if that's what he's going to choose to do? >> reporter: well, we know on one hand that going through the united nations is almost a moot point at this point, given the fact that russia and china have periodically and systemically blocked any resolutions that would punish the syrian regime. what's most likely to happen is to occur on two different fronts. one, you have turkey, which is a member of nato. that's obviously a very important alliance. obviously any attack on turkey would evoke the nato article that would allow for all the countries of nato to come to turkey's defense. we've already seen in the past the turkish citizens and syrians inside turkey have been attacked as a result of the syrian government. there is the possibility that the united states will evoke the nato charter in order to pursue any military option inside syria because it would be posed as a threat to the alliance. that's something that has

happened in the past, also in the case of libya. more importantly, you do need a political cover or diplomatic cover. that's where you'll see, as we heard from secretary of state john kerry, an intensified effort with arab countries to try to get a regional consensus about what to do inside syria. that's why the secretary of state has been on the phone with the arab league secretary general here in cairo as well as other foreign ministers. all of that is an indication that the united states needs to have at least a clear diplomatic agreement among the arab countries here who would not oppose to u.s. intervention in syria. now, i've been speaking to arab diplomats who say they want more u.s. leadership, they want u.s. intervention, but it doesn't necessarily have to be militarily. that's going to be the trick. how they can finesse some kind of agreement from the region, if that's exactly what they're pursuing, to make sure there is that diplomatic cover from the arab league that authorizes this particular intervention for regional security. because as we've heard from

secretary of state and a lot of arab leaders, the syrian conflict is no more an internal civil war. this is now a regional conflict that involves a lot of proxy players and has a humanitarian effect on the region, particularly neighboring countries. >> well, perry, turning back to the domestic politics and reading into what secretary of state john kerry had to say, he used very strong language saying that syria's use of chemical weapons should shock the conscience. do you read this as an effort to build public support behind taking more action, direct action in syria? >> right now the polls show -- reuters had a poll over the weekend. i think it said 25% of americans supported some kind of intervention. so yes, i view it this way in terms of american political support. i also think the russian government said today they likened the evidence to the 2003 weapons of mass destruction. you also saw secretary kerry

give a detailed analysis of the evidence in part as a way to convince people internationally as well the u.s. is on right footing and we have the evidence and it's ironclad that chemical weapons were used. i think that does build toward -- the president didn't speak today, but the secretary is a significant person. this is an effort to convince the american public it's time to intervene. we'll see if those numbers change or not. you certainly would want those numbers to go up a little more before you intervene. >> ayman, tony, perry, thank you very much for your insights. up next, saturday's march on washington was energizing and inspiring, and both krystal and i were there, albeit from different vantage points. we're going to talk about all that. "the cycle" is rolling on. it's monday, august 26th. sup homies?! ready in a minute dad. what's the 411? i can meet you in the car. nah, bro! i'm cool. i'm just chillmaxin'. is there something that you wanted? we can't just spend a little qt as a posse? on the download?

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this is not the time for a nostalgic commemoration, nor is this the time for self-congratulatory celebration. the task is not done. their journey is not complete. >> the eldest son of dr. martin luther king jr. there speaking on the same steps where his father delivered his "i have a dream" speech 50 years ago this week. king iii was one of the amazing speakers at saturday's march on washington. the march was just the start of a week of events commemorating the watershed moment in the civil rights movement. toure and i were both lucky enough to be there saturday and captured this behind-the-scenes look at the day. >> we will win the future. >> why is it important to bring

your family? >> because there's a memory that you hope you can create. you don't know. but there's a memory you hope you can create for people even as young as this little guy, to say i was there for a march on washington. he asked me this morning before we left the house, daddy, what is civil rights? >> dr. king in his last days talked more and more about economic injustice, and there's so much unfinished business. >> now we're talking about gay and lesbian rights. we're speaking about the environment. we're talking about the connection between racial justice and social justice and economic injustice. >> krystal ball is walking to the podium. >> next up, ladies and gentlemen, the first female speaker -- >> right now attorney general eric holder is on the podium. >> until every eligible american has the chance to exercise his or her right to vote -- >> we're all amassed on the mall. we're about to march. it's been a really inspiring

day. >> if you are growing up in this country and recognize there's unfinished business, you have an obligation not to just sit there and hope for it to change or pray it changes or preach about change. you have to show the same kind of struggle and sacrifice. >> race relations has been the gateway to dealing with syria's problems, the gateway to a more perfect union. in that sense, it's the key indicator of hope. >> unfortunately, the reasons we're here today are too much like the reasons we were here 50 years ago. >> this notion we have in this country that we commemorate moments in time but, in fact, the civil rights movement is a continuum. we're having a lot of conversations in new york right now that could have just as well been decades about about the balance between policing and people's civil rights. >> why are you here today and

what's your name? >> because you're here, toure. only reason. no, it's an amazing day. just coming into the city, all the people streaming in, all the love, it's a great day to be reinspired, reinvigorated, and recommitted to the cause. it's just amazing. >> it was absolutely amazing indeed. good work there. i can't even describe how awe-inspiring it was to be in the city, let alone to have the privilege of being able to be on stage just to give introductions. it was so incredible. one of the things that really struck me in talking to people was that they were incredibly educated about what was going on. there was a celebratory sense, but it was more about the work that we have to do. i think in another year, it would have been more of just a celebration. maybe in 2008 after barack obama had just been elected. but this year there was a sense of we know exactly what we need to do. in particular, a lot of folks were focused on what's going on

in north carolina, even people who weren't from the state were talking about the republican overreach in north carolina, the attempts to disenfranchise people there. so it was encouraging to me to see the activism coming out of people. >> yeah, when you think about voting rights, guns, immigration, we definitely feel like we're in crisis. this was definitely an awe-inspiring day. >> and it wasn't just about race. >> no, it was a multiracial movement. i felt connected sort of per pen duckularly to the whole movement. i felt connected backwards to the moment in history. i felt like it was a black political all-star game where everywhere you look there's somebody from some other state. to see my sister mod raiting the whole thing was awesome. it reminded me again it's all about jobs. the lack of jobs. we are at double unemployment of white people. young black unemployment, 28.2%. that is why there's not enough

wealth in the community. that's why there's too much crime in the community. that's why we don't have the connection to america that we need. we need to deal with that. >> right, jobs and justice. i wanted to play one thing we heard from reverend sharpton at the march. >> when they ask us for our voter i.d., take out a photo of medgar evers, take out a photo of goodman cheney. take out a photo of viol viola louisa. they gave their lives to we could vote. look at this photo. it gives you the i.d. of who we are. >> he was so powerful. >> what was the reaction to that? >> huge reaction to the crowd to his entire speech. it was really an emotional crescendo of the event, i would say. >> yeah, people were moved. he brought the preacherly rhythms to it and reminded us of the violence and history we've gone through to get to this moment and how important it is to keep going. there's been blood that's been spilled for us to get here. >> it seemed like that was a lot

of the focus, was to this next generation coming up, to continue this fight. i mean, representative john lewis called on young people to get out there, push and pull, make america what america should be for all of us. i mean, did you guys interact with the younger kids? were they there with their parents? even cory booker spoke about how his dad always said, you know, don't just not know where you came from, the sacrifices we had to make to give you your freedoms. >> a lot of people brought their families, be it their mother who's older, a father, or their 15-year-old or 2-year-old or 3-year-old just because they wanted to experience history. it was powerful to see these people out there with their whole family. >> there was a sense of i want to make sure my kids are here so they remember this moment. >> absolutely. >> beautiful day. >> absolutely. all right. there is much more "cycle" still ahead.

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the news cycle begins with mixed emotions for one of america's true heroes.

army staff sergeant ty carter received the medal of freedom at the white house last hour. he's the fifth living recipient from the wars in iraq and afghanistan. during a fire fight in 2009, carter helped kill enemy troops, resupplied ammunition, and risked his own life to save an injured soldier under attack. before today's ceremony, the sergeant sat down with nbc news chief pentagon correspondent. >> there was something very different. the sound of the gunfire was nonstop. usually you'd hear the putter of a burst, but there were so many bursts going on all the time. it was a constant -- almost like a rock concert, where that constant buzz or hum is always there with the addition of explosions and everything else. >> and speaking of heroes, you're going to want to see this. boston firefighters who were on duty the day of the marathon bombings were honored today. 150 of them received

commemorative pins during a ceremony. the pins include four stripes, representing the three people who died in the bombings and the m.i.t. police officer who was shot and killed by one of the suspected bombers. more than 3400 firefighters are on the ground near yosemite national park battling a major wildfire. the so-called california rim fire has burned more than 150,000 acres so far. 4,000 homes are in its path. president obama has been in contact with governor jerry brown offering federal assistance to the local response. it's not fire, but floods creating a major problem in a very unusual place. more than three inches of rain has fallen in las vegas, which may not seem like that much to those of us back east, but it's six times their normal monthly average. there have been nearly two dozen water rescues so far. a long-time resident told our local affiliate it's the worst flooding he's ever seen there. syria's just become the latest powder keg in the middle east, but even ten years after its end, we're still haunted by

the iraq war. now the national geographic channel has brought together the original brokers of the war to give an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at how it all went down. >> i said, mr. vice president, we can't do a coup. the possibility of overthrowing saddam hussein is nil. >> it was clear from what they told me that to change the regime it would take more direct action. >> but secretary of state collin powell worries that president bush is being steam rolled into war. he asks the president for a private meeting. >> i said, we're going to have to do something, either diplomatically or through the use of military force. we're going to need allies. we're going to need people who will support us. he thought about it for a moment. he said, what should we do? i said, i recommend you take it to the u.n. >> a funny thing happened on the way to diplomacy. we went to war. for more on how these decisions were made, we turn to the

executive bruce eproducer behin documenta documentary. in the clip i watched, i saw dick cheney saying, look, if we do it this way, it will be easy. that word easy jumped out at me that they really thought this could be done easily. >> well, who knows whether they thought it could be done easily. certainly lots of people were telling them that. what we wanted to do, when we set out to do this, lots of people -- there have been hundreds of films, tens of thousands of reports. what we set out to do in this film was to talk to the decision makers. we wanted to talk to cheney. we wanted to talk to powell. we talked to tony blair. we talked to dave petraeus. we talked to lots and lots of iraqis, iraqi politicians from saddam's time and now. that's where we were trying to get that multisided effect. we're trying to get people telling what was going on themselves without journalists or pundits telling them what to think. >> it's interesting, paul.

collin powell was not in the room at the time president bush made the final decision. he said the president kicked everybody out except me. he asked me to stay and then said, dick, what do you think we should do? how unusual is this? i mean, you have to wonder would the outcome have been any different had colin powell been in the room at that time. >> i really felt a bit sorry for colin powell. he probably had a bit of a lonely, lonely life there at the top. he's obviously a very patriotic guy, a very loyal guy. really disagreed with this. he tried all he could. you know, a couple times, in fact, got the british to come in to try to fight in his corner against cheney to get his views held. it's really an extraordinary thing. tony blair flew over to washington at one point to argue colin powell's place. but, you know, had somebody else been in the room at that point, i don't know. that was the night before the actual shooting started. you know, this is really a

question of do they try to knock out saddam. they thought he was in this farm place a few hours early. as it turned out, he wasn't there. they bombed the place. it was maybe the last in a whole string of intelligence failures. >> well, paul, one of the things remarkable about this film is you get the perspective of iraqis who were serving under saddam and what their view of what was going on was from iraq to america. what are some of the insights we gain from the film about what saddam was thinking about doing in the run up to war? >> well, the thing that knocked my socks off is we interviewed a general who was the commander of the fifth corps of the republican guard. as senior an iraqi general as you could get. very close to saddam's family. on the eve of the war, he goes to saddam's son and says, do we have this wmd or don't we? i have thousands of guys in the field. they're going to kill my troops. saddam's son laughed and said, we don't have anything. we don't even have chemical

weapons. i came in quite skeptical about the whole thing. i thought, probably on the scheme of things they knew maybe there weren't the wmd. when i realized that one of saddam's closest, highest ranked generals himself didn't know, you realized what a confusing time it was and that for politicians who wanted to hear intelligence saying that there were wmd, it was murky enough that the intelligence could lead them in that direction. >> all right. thank you, paul. "america versus iraq" premiers tonight. war fatigue is heavy on the mind. do you think it's america's responsibility to retaliate? destiny gamroth says definitely not, we better not. like us on facebook as we continue to follow the developing situation in syria. up next, how comfortable do you feel? honestly. talking about race. straight talk, cycle style, comes next.

50 years after the speech, in order to do more than celebrate dr. king's legacy, to actually achieve his dream, we know we have to find ways to talk about race effectively. alexis johnson, who spoke at this weekend's march, says in order to talk about race, it's crucial first to disarm racial anxiety. this anxiety manifests in our blood pressure, our heart rate reactions, and can diminish our very basic cognitive capacities. in the guest spot is alexis mcgill johnson. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> absolutely. let's start with that goal. how do you get people comfortably talking about race if they're worried about potentially sounding racist when they discuss issues they don't usually talk about?

>> i think you're absolutely right. that's what racial anxiety is. it's our brain shutting down on both sides. on one side, you're afraid you're going to appear racist. on the other side, you're afraid you'll be the object of racism. one of our researchers describes it as a slow trap. it's like, you know, when you ask your boyfriend, do these pants make my butt look big? your brain starts to slow down. you're like, what am i about to get myself into? so one of the challenges is really just to acknowledge the fact that we have to slow down the conversation. we have to acknowledge the fact that people are still ambivalent about race. at the end of the day, they're mostly good people with good intentions. we have to embrace that. >> that's exactly right. good intentions is, i think, the best way to go about this conversation. i have felt that anxiety before, having grown up in an environment that has been -- that was overwhelmingly white. as someone that wants to advance the conversation in a meaningful way, what is the best way to go

about doing that for someone like myself and so many others that feel a little nervous about that without coming across disrespectful, without coming across naive? >> you know, i think the first thing that we have to do, actually collectively, is reject this notion of color blindness. i think that one of the things, particularly around this time with the 50th anniversary of the "i have a dream" speech, we have to recognize that dr. king was actually giving a post-segregation speech. he was talking about black boys and girls joining hands with white boys and girls. he wasn't saying children who happen to be black joining hands with children who happen to be white. somehow we have kind of taken this notion that talking about race or even noticing race is the equivalent of being racist. so just pushing back and being comfortable with ourselves and having that conversation about race and acknowledgining it is great first step. >> that's totally right. when people say to me, well, i don't notice race, that makes my

blood pressure go up. the segregation we live in is very real. a recent poll pointed out that 40% of white people said they don't have any non-white friends. we're living if these separate worlds. i know the sort of things that make black blood pressure go up is when white people talk about they're the real victims of racism nowadays. there's a lot of work to be done there, just to figure out how to talk to each other. >> you're right, toure. we're more segregated now than we were pre-brown v. board in 1954. i think we have this illusion of being closer together than we are because we share a lot of the same cultural icons. we all listen to hip-hop together. we all share the notion of having a black president. so we have this illusion in a way that we can't really put a finger on it. but i really do think that most people want to have this conversation. i think there's work to do on both sides. i think that, you know, as people of color, we also have to

take a step back and allow people their ambivalence, allow people that room to wiggle a little bit without reducing everything to just simple prejudice. >> alexis, you also say that sometimes the way that the media can also sort of re-enforce negative racial stereotypes, what are some of the stories and coverage that makes you cringe? what's a better way to present it? >> i'm guilty of this too, right. let's take the situation of black male achievement. we've been talking about one out of three black boys goes to jail, you know -- will face jail time in their lifetime. you know, the reality is 86% of african-american men have completed high school. that's more than the 15% that we saw in 1963. so we've been making incredible progress, and in order to humanize and to bring particularly communities like african-american men into the fold where we feel some

collective responsibility around their plate, we have to start telling more accurate representations and bringing them into our conversation. >> such an important point. i appreciate your thought about color blindness. sometimes these conversations become an excuse to say, well, can we pretend everything is better? we don't see anything. as you said, that wasn't what dr. king was speaking about. alexis, thank you for being with us. >> thanks for having me. up next, thinking in numbers. the author who turned his rare disorder into a series of essays that will have you looking at the world totally differently. wait a sec! i found our colors. we've made a decision. great, let's go get you set up... you need brushes... you should check out our workshops... push your color boundaries

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and get a quote now. all right. if you're like most people, like myself, just the idea of math equals anxiety. what if crunching numbers was the equivalent to a day at, say, the beach or spa? that is the case for our next guest, who gained fame when he recited from memory the number pi, which took him five hours to call out more than 22,000 digits mistake free. his ability is credited to synesthesia, a neurological condition in which one sense produces experiences in a totally different way. estimates for who has this condition are as high as 1 in 27. it's believed many people out there have it but they don't realize it. he documents the experience in a new book. it's a collection of essays titled "thinking in numbers on life, love, meaning and math." it's great to have you here. i read a little bit about you.

you're the oldest of nine children. my dad is also the oldest of nine. you have the ability to learn languages in two weeks. so does my dad, interestingly enough. i don't know if there's something there. for those that don't have this talent, this ability to pick up a language as quickly as you and others, what is the best way to go about learning a language? are we going about it the wrong way today? >> absolutely. i mean, one of the reasons that i'm a write is because i love words. i love numbers as wiell. language is all about patterns. it's all about structure, just as numbers are, mathematics. so we have to go inside the logic that is each language. each language has its own logic. rather than try to learn artificially with lists of vocabulary that are just given to us, we have to try to get inside with a story. for me, mathematics is that as well. that's what i want to show in this new book, to show that

mathematics is about telling stories. when we tell a story, the words come from an the origin of the word was to tell a story in a particular order, to talk about something in a particular order. so every time you tell a story, whatever that story is, we're doing mathematics. so i love words. i love numbers. this book is about bringing those two elements together. >> the daniel, very much to that point you have a vignette called counting to four in icelandic. you talk about the fact that your culture influences the way that you count and the way language is developed. talk a bit about that. >> absolutely. icelandic is language that i was given to learn as an experiment in a documentary film and i learned conversational icelandic in one week for an interview like i'm giving an interview now in english. i gave an interview in

icelandic. icelandic, they have a wonderful way of counting with the smallest quantities. the numbers one, two, three, and four. they have are 50 words. 50 to count from one to four. it all depends how you use the words in a sentence. if you're talking about the age of a small child, the number of sheep in a field, the number bus that you're having to wait for in the street, you use a different word. sometimes a very different word for the same quantity. there are other cultures that go the other way. there are tribes in the amazonian rain forest that he have no words for counting at all. everything in their world is simply big or small. >> hmm. >> daniel, tell us, why do people feel like time speeds up as they get older? >> well, one explanation that i explore in the book is to do with fractions.

fractions sound very boring, often mathematics is taught badly in school. but fractions are fascinating. when you think about it, for a 10-year-old child, one year is 10%. it's one-tenth of his lifetime. so when he thinks back on the year he's just had, it feels like forever. because it's a big fraction. it's a big part of his whole life. whereas for a 50-year-old person, it's a much smaller fraction. it's only 2%. so the same queept of time, the same year, 365 days feels to this 50-year-old man as though they've gone five times quicker. >> daniel, it's so true. thank you so much for joining us. fascinating book. up next .002 of a percent. why toure says that's an important number to know. stamps.com is the best.

the killing of australian chris lane was tragic and horrifying and evidence of depravity and soullessness. the two black boys and one white boy how allegedly killed him are less than human if they did this. a racist tweet sent by one of the alleged killers says perhaps there was racism. now, in the post trayvon days, the right has a vial new tactic which is to thrust his name and that of delbert belten into the media to make some point about race in america. something even some of the fox's most familiar phase can see is silly.

>> do we now expect jesse jackson to comment on every single heinous crime that happens in the country? do people really not understand this? the trayvon martin situation was because there was an unarmed black teenager who was killed and nobody was arrested. that's why it became a story. as judy said, nobody was covering it. social media blew up around it. that's how it became a story. >> thank you for injecting common sense into a gross attempt to put chris lane on a national score board beside trayvon and jordan davis and oscar grant as if they're all the same as if this is a gotcha game as if i and reverend sharpton must publicly atone each time a black person kills a white person. this is signal jamming. some of us are trying to help the least fortunate and some are retorting with you are the real racist in order to damage the conversation. they are ignoring the fact that anti-racism educator tim weiss

points out whites are six times to be murdered by another white person than a black person. the percentage of white persons killed by a black offender is only .2 of 1%. only one in every 500,000 white people will be murdered about i a black person in i an given year. 84% of white people who are killed are killed by white people. where's the outrage? where is the fear? the fear of black criminals is so much more potent for movement conservatives. they need welfare queens. they need trayvon to be a thug, that fulfills their narrative. they ignore trayvon became a natural story because the justice system arrived and upon finding a dead black body, it shrugged. they found chris lane and immediately went to work and quickly arrested three people. if they go to trial, you can be sure in the courtroom and in the media, chris lane will not be on

trial. we will not pour through his character and explore if he was a thugging to determine if he deserved to die. patricia williams referred to the trial as the monsterization of trayvon. chris lane in death will get the preassumption of innocence that he deserves, something trayvon did not get. i meed trayvon's mother on friday and she told me her son was an innovator who dreamed of being a abate ter mechanic. >> >> the southern strategy has been smoking white racial anxiety so the party can use it is to win rights. all debates have obvious racial undertones. now the motto appears to be you're the real racism. keep it up and movement conservatism which is dominating the gop will keep the gop a 90% white party and. modern america, that is not a

nationally viable model. get comfortable with the relevance because in this increasingly multiracial nation, as long as you use people of color as a tool to scare up votes, you remain irrelevant. that does it for "the cycle." joy reid is back for martin. >> good afternoon. i'm joy reid. it's monday is, august 26th. and syria is officially on notice. ♪ >> major foreign policy. >> the obama administration is stepping up plans for military action. >> it has little doubt the syrian army used chemical gas on its own people. >> this is clearly a big event of grave concern. >> it's less a question of if than when. >> president obama has asked the defense department to prepare options. >> nobody wants boots on the ground. >> that doesn't mean he sits back and says we can't do anything. >> lawmakers on capitol hill increasingly urging the obama administration to take action. >> we have to move and have to move quickly. >> can't can be unilateral american