course. the military says more than an hour after the plane lost contact with civilian air traffic control, their military radar possibly picked up the plane in the strait of malaca, 750 miles away from the intended flight path and where initial searches started four days ago. that's why the search area was extended monday. the strait of malaca is one of the world's busiest shipping channels and runs along the coast. the u.s. has long range aircraft searching over the strait covering about 1,500 square miles every hour. the pc-3 orion is equipped with special sensors to detect small degree in the water but still no sightings of the plane so far. it's been eight hours since the military let us know publicly that the plane possibly changed course, refocusing the search. the military revelations could rule out a sudden and catastrophic event because it means the plane continued to fly after its transponder and

tracking systems went off. we start again today with our aviation go-to guy, nbc's tom costello. tom, let's start with that search. we're now four days in. where do things stand? >> yeah, more than four days, four days have passed in that area and still nothing, but we do have this, and i think a lot of people are asking why is the malaysian military just now telling us that in fact they have more of a direct path, more of a good track on where this plane went than what they suggested yesterday when all they said yesterday was there were suggestions the plane turned back. now it seems like they know a lot more than that. let's put that map back up because as you mentioned this is really in a completely opposite area of where they were searching. we talked about this yesterday, but now it appears the last known point of contact with military radar was in the strait of malaca, so they extended -- they really gave it away yesterday when they expanded the search area, but now the question is, okay, why would you have such what looks to be a pretty straight line returning

to that area, returning over the strait of malaca, and i've got to tell you, we don't have a lot of good answers because flight radar 24, which has a series of sites in which they track the plane, they suggest that the plane's transponders were off. well, there's really only two ways that a transponder would be off, right, intentionally, and you can physically turn off the transponders, two of them on a 777, so you would intentionally want to mask where you're going, or, number two, if there's some sort explosive on board the plane. if the plane suffered some sort of a sudden decompression and really terrible in-flight situation and you lose electrical power there's a backup battery power, would not power the transresponders. would you get some radio strength out of that backup battery, but you're only going to get maybe 45 minutes to an hour of battery power and this is an electrically powered aircraft. the 777 has multiple

redundancies but it's very much based on running on the juice, if you will, the electricity of the plane, so if you have a tragic in-air accident, let's assume it's not somebody intentionally doing it. if there -- if this was an accident, then how do you explain the fact that the plane made a sharp left-hand turn it appears and on a very straight course goes back out over malaysia? that would not be something you would expect from a plane that's out of control, that suffered cataclysmic in-flight accident, and so now i must say this -- this notion that perhaps somebody intentionally messed with this plane is starting to come back into the fore whereas yesterday that was really being discounted. who would have wanted to do this? would it have been a pilot, one of the two pilots on board who may have had a death wish or something, intentionally turned off the transponders? for what purpose, we don't know, or did somebody hijack that plane? was there somebody who had some intentions that we're not aware of?

feeding into this conspiracy theory is now we have these two iranian teenagers, 18 and 19, who had bought these tickets on fake bossports -- fake passports to go to europe, one allegedly to meet up with his mother. did they have a role, or is this one of the many strange coincidences you always seem to get whenever you have some sort of a major aviation issue come up? >> tom, let me ask you something. >> guys, we're per lexed. back to you. >> let me ask you how the new information that might impact the search of how it took two years to fine the bulk of the air france. the strait of malacca is not at deep, 660 feet deep, even more shallow is the gulf of thailand. how does the water depth impact the search in the investigation? >> in fact, i just got off the phone with the gentleman from

the woods hole oceanic institute in massachusetts that helped find the remains of flight 447, and he talked about how this was a -- just a really process that went on and on and on for weeks and months, and it did take two years until they actually spotted the wreckage on the floor of the ocean, and he talked about different layers. temperature layers in the ocean that can really mess with the pingers that go off from an elt or from the black boxes on board a plane. to our knowledge so far they have not picked up any pingers or an elt which would happen if they had a g-force impact with the ground, so that's yet another complication, you're right, but at this point, you know, if you had -- the experts believe that this plane had about seven to eight hours of fuel on board when it lost initial contact over the gulf of thailand. seven to eight hours of fuel and you're headed back the opposite

direction. you do the math. you're now talking about -- keep that map up, and if we could expand, it i know you can't, but if you were, to you know, google map it, you're now talking about a huge area that would even be in the indian ocean. >> wow. >> of where potentially -- we're talking thousands of miles potentially of potential area of where this plane could be. it's just -- it's just vast. >> wow. >> all right. tom costello, thank you so much for the update. here with us now is robert mcintosh, former ntsb investigator in charge, and, bob, you also helped to run accident investigations on foreign soil, so tell us, how does the ntsb coordinate in a situation like this in an international situation such as this, and do you put your full trust in those who are taking the lead in those investigations? >> well, indeed, the -- the lead agency is the state of occurrence, state of registry or state of occurrence and consequently the malaysians are in charge. the united states supports the

investigation through their state department, through the ntsb's accredited representative team, and that's made up of faa and manufacturers' representatives. so we've got quite a bit of skin in the game, if we can say that. however, the -- the in charge is the state of occurrence. if it's on land, and indeed the state of registry if it's in the sea. >> bob, when you do an investigation, you obviously usually have two routes. one you is gather up the evidence and see where it leads and the other is you have some theory of the case. we want to get a response to some of the theories laid out by the inspector general, hijacking, sabotage, some sort of psychological problem of the passengers and/or crew and personal problems among the passengers and/or crew. your thoughts? >> certainly historically we've had some hijackings, as we know, and we've had the sabotage. it's most interesting that these

transponders were turned off. that -- that's indeed indicates that the radio bus was not active, so if we had some sort of a -- for instance a deep depression event of some sort, it would have to make contiguous damage, along with the electrical system, to do that. consequently the -- the issue of damage from depression doesn't look very liable at this time, but, indeed, there's a big tangled web out there, and we've got an aircraft that perhaps if these radar signals are correct indeed it has continued on a flight path long after we lost the primary radar return. >> bob, i've got to tell you, the fact of the transponder being thrown off is the thing that throws me off most and so many theories that comes at you, you have to say that can't happen because the transponder

got turned off. something that piqued my interest, a reporter in the "wall street journal" said one of the co-pilots of this flight allowed two women who he did not know to sit in the cockpit from takeoff to landing and he's flirting with them throughout the flying, but just the idea that he's willing to break sort of modern protocol and let people he doesn't know just sit in the cockpit with him raises a lot of questions about just sort of where his head is at in terms of cockpit security. in this sort of investigation, how much do you want to look at the history and the biography of the pilots and perhaps the crew to sort of figure out maybe some breach that they allowed because of their sort of -- of the way they look at the cockpit? >> well, certainly, we do want to look at that kind of a thing, the discipline in the cockpit and the discipline throughout the airline is -- is very relative perhaps to this situation, and it has been relative to other crashes where we've had actually children in

the cockpit of a crew member, a captain crash an airplane, and we've had inadvertent movements of simply perhaps a foot, the shoe on a foot rest that turned off a flight -- a -- a transponder in the aircraft down in brazil a few years ago, so all these things, indeed, are relevant. extraneous people in the cockpit and extraneous movement in the cockpit. >> you were also so fascinated by the mystery of this story, and i think i, along with so many others, have spent a lot of time on google trying to search for any plausible scenario that could have happened, and i came across the payne stewart, the golfer, the plane crash that happened back in 1999 which was also somewhat of a mystery, and i have to say some of the details are eerily similar. in that case the plane was traveling from oernldo to dallas

and kept on flying on autopilot for four hours and the final report said the probable cause was the loss of consciousness by two pilots and a failure to reef oxygen. could this a logical explanation for this mystery? >> well, the payne stewart case is somewhat similar in that we did have an aircraft at altitude, and at altitude you may have eight to ten seconds to react to a loss of pressurization, the time of useful consciousness. now this is something that does occur when perhaps in the case of the crew, they didn't have an oxygen turned on and in the case of helios over in greece, they had made a mistake in the way they set up their pressurization system. however, those kind of things at flight level, the aircraft, if the crew were in incapacitated, that aircraft would have

continued on heading and on altitude to continue at $35,000. if we had a cree incapacitation. we don't appear to have that situation in that we have a transponder going off and then another direction in altitude. >> all right. robert mcintosh, thank you so much. up next, new accusations today of government spying, this time senators allegedly under the microscope, and you know what, they are not so psyched about that? details as "the cycle" rolls on for this tuesday, march 11th. hi. it's not happening, honey. let her get it. she got her safe driving bonus check from allstate last week. and it's her treat. what about a tip? oh, here's one... get an allstate agent. nice! [ female announcer ] switch today and get two safe driving bonus checks a year for driving safely. only from allstate. call 866-905-6500 now. here we go! hold on man. is that a leak up there? that's a drip. whoo. okay.

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msnbc is the place for politics, and on the hill today senator dianne feinstein made major waves when she accused the cia of violating federal law. the head of the senate intelligence committee said the agency searched staff computers for internal document related to the interrogation program. >> i have grave concerns that the cia's search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the united states constitution. i have asked for an apology and a recognition that this cia search of computers used by its oversight committee was inappropriate. i have received neither. >> this afternoon on "andrea mitchell reports" cia director john brennan responded. >> when the facts come out on this, i think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.

>> the white house press briefing jay carney was grilled. >> is it ever concerning that a government agency would pawn off what seems like unconstitutional actions as something that the white house ordered them to do? i could diagram that sentence with all the ways it's filled with hypotheticals. >> jonathan allen is the white house reporter for bloomberg news. jonathan, this is a pretty strong claim coming from a white house ally. >> it's unbelievable. it's spy versus spy committee going on in washington right now. yeah, dianne feinstein is not some whack job. she is, you know, longtime intelligence committee member, pretty establishment, long time supporter of barack obama, someone who has long been untrusted with the nation's secrets and she says the cia has basically grabbed documents that

staff members were using to look into the cia interrogations. i think you'll see some defense of the cia from republicans, even as democrat and barack obama's own party are going after his cia. >> yeah. it sounds like just the beginning, but jonathan, let's transition a little bit from too much government intervention to maybe not enough. just today crimea's regional legislature declared independence from ukraine ahead of sunday's referendum on secession. with the ukrainian prime minister set to visit the president at the white house tomorrow, americans are showing an increasing unease when it comes to intervention. a new poll shows a majority country, 56%, say we shouldn't get too involved in ukraine. so jonathan, how much do these polls actually impact how our lawmakers move forward on this? >> i think the general wariness and weariness of the country towards american involvement in foreign lands, particularly any sort of military involvement or

any hint of force from the united states very much affects not only the way lawmakers think but the way this white house thinks. president obama came into office promising to end two wars. he's somebody who has obviously decided that he doesn't want to use force unless absolutely necessary and the thing that the united states says it wants from russia are, you know, russia will not respond to the united states based on our pleas and sanctions and some of the stuff in the ukraine, and what it shows there may be a limited ability from the united states to affect other major players halfway across the clone if we're not willing to use our military. it is an interesting point that the american public is a little bit i think tired of some of the foreign ntantanglement. >> the other big political story, bridget kelly getting out of that hearing in new jersey regarding the subpoenas for the documents in the christie investigation, looking into that footage, a real scene at the

courthouse. i'll tackle some of the law and want to ask you about the politics. what jumped out to me from the jumping's questions today was a real question about whether this was a, quote, fishing expedition. under the rules, someone like bridget kelly can take a right not to incriminate themselves and in some cases say i don't have to give up documents because this is like asking me to incriminate myself and the judge took that argument seriously saying this has to be very particular requests and you can't ask someone to give up everything. walk us through the politics, if she does get compelled to give out more documents. >> look, i think the politics of this are tough for chris christie and why everyone is interested in it more of the spectacle of the bridge being blown. this is a big story because it involves a potential 2016 candidate and the problem for chris christie is whether or not he's shown or his aides are voen to have done everything improper or illegal. he'll spend the next year, year

and a half fighting in negligent against the legislature and guest investigations during a time when he should be building a national political campaign. proves he should walk and chew gum at the same time, it will be an impressive feat. >> let me talk about a big-time special election, florida's 13th district. people have been looking at this race quite closely for a long time. the district that has elected republican representatives for 30 years, went for mccain and also went for obama in 2012 so it is a little teeny bit swingy nowadays, but this race is really about the power of obamacare to shape voters and will really define how other candidates and other races use obamacare for or against their opponents. >> sure, and we've seen this happen before. you know, a couple years ago, 2011, there was a special election in upstate new york

involving kathy hockeckel, a te run for obamacare after it was first enacted, before the implementation, so obviously the politics are different. at that point you just had a law that had been passed and now you have one that you can look at and assess and both side understand no matter how this comes out it will be played as a referendum on obamacare. you've got a state in the south in florida where you have a lot of retirees. people are going to be look at it, how it plays with them, how it plays generally speaking, so a lot at stake for both parties here in this election tonight. >> yeah. i'm always reluctant to read too much into one election and extrapolate result for the entire country as you say aptly put it, the last issue we wanted to take up with you is the senate democrats last night had an all-night talk-a-thon on climate change highlighting their commitment to addressing and dealing with climate change, you know, legislation unlikely

to go anywhere in the house or the senate really at this point. what's the purpose of having this right now, and do you think that we're seeing a renewed energy among the left for solutions to addressing climate change? >> i think the senate democrats are making their donors happy, unable to pass climate change legislation, unable to get any sort of carbon tax or anything like that, they are doing something to try to show their donors on the left who, are agree with you, invigorated right now, energied, trying to find a way to use their vote and particularly their money to leverage more out of the obama administration, perhaps even leverage more identity of democratic candidates in 2016, certainly those in the mid-term elections, tom stier, a big fund-raiser for democrats who cares about climate change, has prompted to dump $100 million in the mid-term elections, 506 his own and 50 raised from other people. he hosted a fund-raiser a couple weeks ago for the democratic

senatorial campaign committee and, boom, a couple weeks later, boom, the democratic senators are taking to the floor all night long. obviously when they start late at night, you can watch that in california. i don't think there's any great mystery here as to why you're seeing that on the senate floor. they are trying to show their donors they are doing something. >> speaking of climate change, jonathan, looks quite nice in d.c. today. >> it has been a wonderful climate change here in d.c., although -- >> and enjoy it while you can. >> that's not an endorsement of climate change in general. >> enjoy it while you can. you can cover it all. always appreciate you coming. >> my pleasure. take care. >> speaking of the weather, spring today and snow tomorrow. ugh, say it ain't so. we'll get a check on the weather. that is next. 

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we are back, and you are in the storm cycle right now. in new york temperatures are the mid-60s, that's right, mid-60 vmgtz you heard me right. >> no, i didn't.

>> that's going to change thanks to what's lurk out west. snow and ice blanketing an area and some areas will have a foot of snow by the time all is said and done. looks like the big cities will escape the worst of it. up in maine anywhere between 18 and 24 inches is expected. spring begins in nine days, krystal and looks like mother nature is soaking up every minute of it. >> congressman paul ryan's attempt to overhaul government assistance programs got off to a rocky start. the house committee chairman released a report on the war on poverty and blasted government assistance programs for low-income people as inefficient and ineffective. right there he proves it by showing the poverty rate as near lit same as it was on the onset of the war on poverty, but, wait, what is that little end note there? >> what is it? >> oh, the number he uses doesn't include government transfer payments which, you know, is pretty much everything. transfer payments include things like retirement and medical

benefits, unemployment insurance and benefits for military veterans, you know, things that help lift people out of poverty, so much so that these benefits can actually make up to 25% of personal income for those who are struggling. not only that but the report actually lists many government assistance programs that are actually work, so there's a lot under the surface of this report and to help us understand exactly what it proves and what it doesn't is the managing editor for thinkprogress.com. thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> you took a look at some of the programs that paul ryan is saying are ineffective, and you said he sort of accidentally proves that a lot of these promise are actually working. >> kind of like a big oompts some of the biggest programs, things like veterans health care, the earned income tax credit, those things that have really helped americans the most or is a large for instance single-payer health care program, he gives it good marks, so it's kind of curious. yes, in a 200-page report you

can find a lot of smaller programs that have problems, and they do, but the fact that the largest programs are impactful i think really undermines his case that the programs are oftentimes the problem. >> yeah. in your article on think progress goes through some of these programs, school breakfast, education for homeless children, child care and development, food assistance, the ryan white hiv/aids program for state funding, housing opportunities for individuals with hiv or aids. veterans programs. a lot of things, igor, you point out in the article are actually pretty hard to be against even if you are somewhat of a fiscal conservative. it sort of goes toy think the -- the implication of your piece which is maybe it's easy to demagogue some of this as big government in the abstract. gets a lot hard erharder. >> he's very light on specifics, talks about tax reform but can't

name any of the tax loopholes he would close because that's where it gets difficult politically, that's where you have even people in your own party saying, wait a second, this goes too far, and so when he releases his budget next week or later this month, it's going to be interesting to see how much detail will he actually have, for instance, you know, he said the earned income tax credit is working. president obama agrees. is he going to try to find kwhon ground, so we'll seat level of detail, and if he's really serious. if he's really serious about reform because reform is needed, he should kind of try to work across the aisle on this one. >> and i think what he's really trying to say is there's a difference between these programs working and actually helping to alleviate poverty. you know, asking the question how can we make some of these programs more effective, an here's what he wrote in his statement. he said for too long we've measured compassion by how much we spend instead of how many people get out of poverty. we need to take a hard look at what the federal government is doing and ask is this working?

i mean, agree with ryan or not, if we want the focus to be on reducing poverty, shouldn't we be asking these questions? >> well, some of these programs can certainly work better, but i think if you look at it broadly, poverty rate has fallen ten percentage points from 1967 to 2012, and the reforms he's talking about, for instance, welfare reform, in 1996, conservatives point to as this kind of gold standard of reform, has actually let people down when they need help the most during the economic recessions, so you've got to be careful what you're doing, what solutions you're using, and if those solutions are about more about saving money than helping people, you're ultimately not going to reduce poverty. >> your policy analysis is extraordinary, as usual, but i want to see if you can do a little psychoanalysis with me, because when i see paul ryan come out at cpac and do that somewhat now infamous speech about the boy who did not have the brown paper bag lunch and that made him feel like he

wasn't cared for by his parents, and that seems to be a classic example of taking a story or a fact that is meant to be an anti-poverty measure and just turning it on its head, and you say how could you do that in a major prepared speech in maybe in an off-the-cuff comment, get it wrong, a major prepared speech at cpac, knows the world is watching and knows the liberal is watching wanting to catch him and he has to apologize for this and another friend of the show pointed out maybe some of the psychoanalysis behind this. he says if you're sure your ideas are correct and confident the solutions are the right one you've already elected a significant barrier to self-examination. do you believe that that analysis that was started is accurate? >> well, look, i'm not sure what's going on in ryan's head. i can tell you what was going on in mind when we immigrated to america from russia some 20

years ago. i remember my family was on food stamps for some time. i was that kid who was getting reduced lunch in my first elementary school, but the feeling was never oh, you know, if only i could get a brown paper bag or be like everybody else. i mean, certainly you wanted to fit in, but i think we all kind of understood that this was a time when we were just getting established in this country, when we needed some help and that allowed us to move forward eventually. >> and it certainly did not mean that your parents didn't care about it. >> exactly. >> igosh, thank you so much. >> thank you. up next, a case ripped from the headlines "law & order" style. teens in prison for years while judges get millions in secret kickbacks for sending them there. inside the disturbing documentary "kids for cash" next. >> we're talking about children. >> i wanted them to be scared out of their minds. >> i don't understand how that was a bad thing. [ male announcer ] they say he was born to help people clean.

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>> in a scandal known as kids for cash. >> 2.6 million. >> in return for sentencing kids to juvenile detention. >> i never sent a kid away for a penny. >> in january 2009 america was shocked to hear of a judicial scandal that sounded basically like a "law & order" svu episode, kids for cash that. may sound extreme but you it's essentially what happened. two judges sent more than 3,000 minors to jail while getting more than $2 million in kickbacks from the operators of a juvenile detention facility. the news shocked the community in pennsylvania. parent and teachers learned that corruption had played a role in sending minesors to jail for incidents at innocuous as

creating that fake myspace page. the judges were convicted and sentenced 17 to 28 years in federal prison and the story opens up larger questions about private prisons and juvenile detention. the filmmaker's new documentary "kids for cash "tells of exclusive interviews with the judges themselves. welcome. >> thanks for having me. >> when you look at this story, your first feeling is how could this happen, these young people's lives often completely ruined, and no good reason for that, really? >> well, it really was a story right out of charles dickens, i think. could you hardly believe that it was actually happening, and it was actually happening in the community that i live in on top of everything else, and it was, you know, how could these celebrated judges all of a sudden be accused of such a heinous crime of literally selling children for money? >> wow, yeah. >> one of the things that you do in the documentary is you talk

to some of the victims and you really shine the light on the specifics of the human tragedy here. let's take a look at one of the stories of a young man named ed. >> i remember ed's father telling me that he knows ed's at this underage drinking party. he had this plan to go up with these two cops that were friends of his, and they were going to go in and get ed out of there and get something on him that was going to get him caught, like scare him straight kind thing. little did i know that we had no right, that he's in their custody now. >> ed was ultimately sent to this prison. what happened to ed, and what was the impact on the kids that were sent there? >> ed is a good example because he had some issues in school at a pretty young age. he was diagnosed with add or adhd. he was medicated and the teachers tried to deal with him and the parents tried to deal with him as well, but ultimately he started drinking at an

underage drinking party basically and his mother was concerned about that, and it escalated to the point where they were trying to get him help and literally his father made arrangements with friends of his that were policemen to have him picked up at an underage drinking party, pretty much scare him straight and ultimately he was put in front of judge schirla and confined and when he came out he was worse and angry and the cycle began. >> part of what makes your film so extraordinary you is talk to the villains, the judge being one of them, let's show a little bit of that. >> i wanted these kids to think that i was the biggest s.off. this b. that ever lived. i wanted them to be scared out of their minds when they had to deal with mee because i was hoping because of that that they would never put themselves in a position again where they had to come back and deal with me. >> does the judge continue to

think that he was jailing people, kids, for good reason, or does he now admit that the quid pro quo, the kickbacks is why he was jailing so many kids? >> no, i don't think he'll ever admit to that. i think he admits that taking the money was wrong and unethical and he shouldn't have done it, but he contends that, you know, look, these kids needed help, and parents didn't know how to be parents and so he was going to be, you know, their parents and he was going to treat him like his parents treated him and still believes that he did the right thing. >> wow. >> i mean, if you take the money out of this, this was a judge who was elected and then re-elected and really celebrated by the people of his town for being you have to on crime. this was around the time of columbine. i think there was a sense of comfort around him being tough. no one questioned whether or not it was appropriate to put kids behind bars for minor crimes. isn't that the bigger problem here? >> in fact, he ran on a platform of zero tolerance back in 1995. he was elected in '96, three

years before columbine, and he thought he was a man before his time, and he was celebrated by the community. he was elected to two tenured terms. schools invited him in literally to give a speech, like if you come before me, i'll send you away and he made good on that, and he had a long lives speaking engagements from schools that wanted him to talk and deliver that message. >> right. i mean, i think abby raises such an important point, at least an implication of your work here is what kind of policies do we want? do we want a school-to-prison pipeline, because you take out bribery or the money and you still have the question here of whether this is the way we want to deal with minors making what are often small mistakes as you document? >> that's right. >> robert-makers thank you for your time. >> up next, ever think of someone and immediately run into them in the sidewalk, and what's with the people that win the lottery more than once? straight ahead meet a mathematician which explains why you may be experiencing a miracle every month. $1,000 fuel reward card is really what makes it like two deals in one. salesperson #2: actually, getting a great car with 42 highway miles per gallon makes it like two deals in one.

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to life in sort of a miracle tv loves to build around which is why abc's "resurrection" ves nating, but in the real world honest-to-god miracles happen all the time the existence of life on this plan set a miracle, a man winning the lottery twice in one year with the same numbers, a miracle. a show on msnbc hosting by me, total miracle. but then again maybe these things aren't really miracles. for a look at why mere calls and rare events happen every single day let's bring in emeritus professor of mathematics author of the book "the improbability principal." professor you say most things we consider miracles can be explained by the law of inevitability. >> or other aspects of the improbability principle which says that highly emprobable events happen all the time and the law of inevitability is one of the five laws comprising it. >> so i am of the belief that

miracles happen every day. i don't think we take the time to stop and recognize them and i'm reminded of my sister who we adopted from china. my mom wanted to adopt her for years and my dad would say we've got five of our own kid. let's focus on them for these years, and all of a sudden he turned around one night and said i'm warming up to this idea of adopting a babe frechina and that happened to be on may 19th. they went through the adoption process, and two years later they end up getting this little girl gracie may, finding out that she was found out on may 19th, the very dad my dad told my mom i'm warming up to the idea. she's changed all of our live. we always say that this a miracle that happened to our family. are you telling me that this is just about math. >> that's a very good point. it's not just about math. math under lies what's happening, the five laws of the improbability principle, but the human brain interacts with it. the point is we notice rare coincidences, ignoring the

trillions and billions of other sort of events going on around us, and just focus on the ones which have sort of meek to us, like the one you've just illustrated with. >> that a beautifully diplomatic response, given the question, a strong question from abby huntsman. i should mention a beautiful story obviously. i think there is more than one way you can interpret those events. the other piece of that i know you explore is how long were the odds, right? 1 out of 365 means that number is going to come up, right? what is your response to things that are such long odds that they might not seem inevitable in one person's life or in one calendar year? >> yes, a very good question. what i want to do is put it into context by illustrating with one of the laws of the improbability principle a law of truly large numbers. suppose i flip a coin 20 times and it comes up head 20 times. you would think that was a very rare event. 1 in a million chance.

but suppose i tell you i had been flipping the coin a long time and i had been flipping it for millions of times before the 20 consecutive heads came up. you wouldn't think that was so improbable and you would notice it when it happened. a law of truly large numbers which basically says if you keep doing something for long enough, something extraordinarily will happen. >> a lot that is profound in this book and really beautiful in this book. you write some people seem to think understanding a phenomenon takes away the mystery but a grasp of the cause of the colors of the rainbow doesn't detract from its wonder. while abby was speaking, i was thinking of that quote from you, because just because there are these mathematical principles while abby's family adopt a girl on the day they decided to adopt a baby girl and when i sit next to a random man on an airplane

and he becomes my husband. because there is a doesn't discount the possibility that there can be such a thing as guide who is behind these laws and principles or a belief in fa fate. >> i think sitting next to somebody who subsequently becomes your spouse, the law of truly large numbers applies. if you think about the number of people who sit next to strangers on planes over the course of the year it is a truly large number. the fact we can explain these things in mathematical terms is right. the first time i went to new zealand i went to a cafe and sitting next to me was somebody with a business card from my own university and it was a total coincide. i thought what is the chance of that? then i can do the calculations

but it's still an amazing thing. >> still doesn't it explain if you believe in such things, why that particular event happens to you? >> yes. david han, thank you very much. up next, the definitive answer what will happen in the gop civil war. how could we know? we have a crystal ball. early. up late. thinking up game-changing ideas, like this: dozens of tax free zones across new york state. move here. expand here. or start a new business here... and pay no taxes for 10 years. with new jobs, new opportunities and a new tax free plan. there's only one way for your business to go. up. find out if your business can qualify at start-upny.com with tampax radiant -- whatever i want. [ female announcer ] tampax radiant protects 30% better. plus, it comes with a resealable wrapper for discreet disposal. you'll be ready to wear anything with the tampax radiant collection.

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cut! [bell rings] this...is jane. her long day on set starts with shoulder pain... ...and a choice take 6 tylenol in a day which is 2 aleve for... ...all day relief. hmm. [bell ring] "roll sound!" "action!"

who will win the battle for the soul of the gop? will be it the establishment or the tea party or the libertarians or the social conservatives? i have come to a definitive conclusion, are you ready? here is the answer. it doesn't matter.

that's right. who wins and who loses in fight for control of the republican party is totally irrelevant. sure, it's a fun parlor game to look at who is up and who is down and the ted cruz and rand paul showdown. wait, no, it's not. it's a terrible parlor game. what is a parlor game? any way if you care about the future of this country, the republican party imagines are of no consequence. look at this graph. unprecedented gap between the voting preferences of young voters and everyone else. mill lineals may not be excited but whatever they call themselves they are liberal and much more to vote democratic than older generations. republicans do you know why in five of the last six presidential elections you've lost the popular vote some it's because every year the electorate is becoming brownen and more influenced by the mill lineals who is liberal and sorry, gop, they are staying that way. to paraphrase sally field in her

oscar win, they don't like you. they don't like you. your economic ideology is toast, debunk. your heavy intellectual is paul ryan. come back to me when have you some actual evidence for your economic ideology and, no, novels don't count. republicans and their deck shifting civil war dent matter. if you're interested in where the country goes from here the action is all on the democratic side. while our own internal divide is les noi less noisier than the republican one it is as real as more important. this divide that counts is between the pro corporate democrats and the pro worker democrats. it's pretty easy to tell which is che and their best incarnation the pro corporate demonstrates do the america's bidding and do doing the best

they can to shore up the safety net when working folks are abused by big banks and big business at least there is something of a net to catch them. pro worker dems want to stop the abuse in the first place and keep and sxaned the safety net in case those protections fail. when pro corporate dems get their way in politics the past 22 years inequality rises and when that happens the power of the plutocracy rises. when they call the shots like they do now the safety net gets it. it turns out they don't much care for supporting the workers on whose backs they earn their riches. so even though corporate democrats may be well intentioned, their policies lead to a toxic brew of money and power and that shreds the safety net and strips workers of their rights and hole ily lows the middle class. to be clear either type of democrat is a million times better than the folks the gop has to offer but that is a pretty low bar.

time to expect more to demand more. do we want a society governed for the needs of the many or the desires of the few? i know which side of the battle i'm on. do you? that does it for "the cycle." now alex wagner is now. team christie takes the fifth to keep their g-mail accounts locked. it is tuesday, march 11th. this is "now. ♪ >> breaking news from trenton, new jersey. two central figures step in and bridget anne kelly are refusing to turn over documents. >> kelly wrote the infamous e-mail. >> fighting for her right to remain silent this is a pivotal point. >> obviously, miss kelly i