joining me now, the author, jonathan cole.s a professor at columbia university where he served as provost and dean of facultys from 1989 to 2003. i'm pleased to have him here at this table. welcome. >> rose: great to be here, charlie. >> rose: congratulations. we could just talk and i could take these three questions and we could a great conversation about american universities. it's something we do well. >> it certainly. is undoubtedly we have the best system of higher learning in the world. i think very few educated americans actually understand why we have that 80% of the top 20 universities in the world. and part of my book is to try to explain to them what it is that produced these great institutions. >> rose: explain to me. well, most people when they think about our american universities they think naturally about undergraduate education. and that ice what they are most centrally interested in. after all, this is what their children are going to be up to. they want their kids to go to very good schools. they are interes

jonathan cole i would like to challenge a few things paul driessen has said.when ddt was used in the second world war it was used in a powdered form and is extremely hard to be absorbed through the skin. it was mixed with will and becomes highly toxic. and isolating ddt, linda lear is right, what happens when you are exposed to ddt and you're taking antibiotics and other drugs? what happens in your body when all of this mixes? does it make your antibiotics toxic? that was something, asked a magnificent question. i am probably murdering the pronunciation but there was mandarin and some of those were highly toxic. >> i agree. those are more toxic and that is why there are more controls on them. when you mix ddt with oil because it is not soluble in water. it was busted as a power on troops and holocaust survivors. there has never been a study that shows any -- toxic effects on human beings. that doesn't say that there's not an impact of some species, certainly all the chemicals including birth control pills into the environment. this was an effect on various spe