the play for this program, saint joan, by george bernard shaw. special guest, julie harris. now your host mr. jose ferrer. saint joan is essentially about sainthood, but there is a certain romantic quality to it as george bernard shaw sweeps his audience along in an almost poetic flight. it is not a biography in the sense that you can turn to the play for an accurate reporting of the facts, rather shaw selected the facts which suited his purpose. he approaches joan, his protagonist, historically, but develops the character mainly in terms of ideological clashes. primarily, shaw is interested in joan as someone who imposes her ideas on history. she is led by the voices of st. catherine, st. margaret, and st. michael who instructed her to acquire a horse, soldier's clothing with armor, and an army and drive the english out of france. so her actions are based on her faith in her voices. shaw was a co-director for the first london production in 1924 with sybil thorndike in the title role, and he reminded her that joan was a sturdy, independent 19-year-old woman, not a sweet angel

norman lear talked about is favorite clay was by george bernard shaw. who was a liberal. if you didn't know he was a liberal and went to see the play, both the hawk and dove point of view are presented with equal eloquence and intelligence, and it was up to the audience to make up their minds. let's throw this out there and get a dialogue started. at the time, there were no vcrs, no dvr, no tivo, so it didn't promote a dialogue. if you wanted to watch the show, you had to watch it when it was on. that meant that you were having a shared experience with everybody else who was watching it at that time. i made this point before. at the time, we were a country of about 200 million people. of the 200 million people, anywhere between 30 and 45 million people at one time were watching that show. now we are in a country of over 300 million, and if you have a show that does 10, 15 million viewers, that is a major hit. and you are not watching it at the same time as everybody else. but on your dvr, but saturday night. if you watch the show print them and, monday people were talking

there's an opposite view on the utility of history, another george, george bernard shaw. a quip from him is that we learn from history that we learn nothing. [laughter] another shaw quote, we are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. there's actually a whole scholarly cottage industry on misplaced historical analogies, the misuse of history. policymakers who learned the wrong lessons from the past. make they don't repeat -- maybe they don't repeat the mistakes of the past. that's nice. but they create, they have new mistakes that may even be worse than the old ones. some examples of misplaced analogies. there's a wonderful book by pong called "analogies at war." he provides an example of how in the summer of 1965 the u.s. ambassador to south vietnam, henry cabot lodge, invoked the munich conference at a cabinet meeting and succeeded in helping persuade lyndon johnson to escalate the war in vietnam. he argued, cabot lodge argued if the u.s. did not intervene in vietnam, world war iii would be unleashed. as he put it, quote

george washington hospital and we were on our way. >> the first bulletin. >> we interrupt. there's been a late development. shots fired outside the hilton hotel a short while ago. here's bernard shawe don't know precisely what happened nor -- pardon me. my apology. details are very sketchy at this moment, we don't know precisely what happened, we don't know the sequence. first of all, the president is safe. >> at the hotel, john hinckley, jr. was buried beneath a heap of humanity. >> it's like a pyramid, but there's a hole in this pile of people. i zoom into this hole and there's a picture of this guy's eyes wide open looking at me. >> granger was pinned inside that pile with hinckley, he felt something beneath his leg. >> i pulled my leg out, and that kicked out the gun. >> you can see the gun on the sidewalk in this photo. three men lay nearby, shot, wounded by hinckley. >> the press secretary went down, he got shot in the head. >> all three would survive. but press secretary jim brady would never be able to return to his white house post. agents rushed hinckley over to granger's patrol car. the rear door would not open. he was hustled into a second police car. and by nightfall,

george washington hospital. we were on your way. >> the first bulletin. >> there's been a late development. shots reportedly fired outside the hotel where president reagan spoke a short time ago. here's bernard shawwashington bureau. >> details are very sketchy, we don't know precisely what happened -- >> bill! >> pardon me. okay, my apology. details are very sketchy at this moment. we don't know precisely what happened. we don't know the sequence. first of all, the president is safe. >> at the hotel, john hinckley jr. was buried beneath a heap of humanity. >> it's like a pyramid, but there's a hole in this pile of people. so i zoomed into this hole and there's this picture of this guy with his eyes wide open, looking at me. >> granger was pinned inside that pile with hinckley. he felt something beneath his leg. >> i pulled my leg out and that kicked out the gun. >> you can see the gun on the sidewalk in this photo. three men lay nearby, shot, wounded by hinckley. >> the press secretary went down. he got shot in the head. >> all three would survive, but press secretary jim brady would never be able to return to his white house post. agents rushed hinckley over to granger's patrol car. the rear do