i'm maria hinojosa. this is one on one. francisco goldman, you're an award-winning author and a contributor to the new yorker. welcome to the show. >> it's very nice to be here. >> hinojosa: so, we're talking about some pretty serious stuff here. but it all kind of starts in an interesting way for you. you are this guatemalan jewish kid growing up in the northeast. and in the late 1970s, you make a decision, like a lot of kids, which is to take a road trip. and you take that ad trip right into guatemala in a moment of civil war, essentially. >> well, my father's family... my father's from a russian jewish immigrant background family from here in boston. but my mother's family in guatemala is an old fashioned guatemalan mestizo catholic very traditional guatemalan family. and i had spent a lot of time in guatemala as a child, the first couple years of my life, almost every summer, summer after summer. but then, as i become more and more your typical american teenage kind of kid, i become sort of self-conscious about that. i w

i'm maria hinojosa. this is one on one. wes studi, you are an amazing actor, the star of... well, let's just say avatar, dances with wolves, last of the mohicans, geronimo. what an honor to have you on our program. i have to tell you, i want to go to a movie that came out several years ago-- geronimo, an american legend. because you were... you carried that movie. i'm sure many of our viewers saw that. the moment that i want to talk about for a second is the moment when you first appear onscreen in that movie. and when you are looking at the american soldiers, and you have this look. the camera just kind of zeroes in on your face, and you have this look of distrust, disdain, and interest, and you captured that so well. and i just said it has to be because in your own life as a native american, growing up in oklahoma, these emotions are not... they're not far from your own life, right? >> and they're not foreign, either. yes, it's true. yeah. that's one of the advantages that we as native americans, if you will, american ind

i'm maria hinojosa. this is one on one. sheena iyengar, you are the author of the book the art of choosing. and thank you for choosing to be with us. >> thank you for having me here today. >> hinojosa: so your book starts out basically where you lay out two narratives of your own personal history. you were born in canada, parents are from india, the sikh religion, and you basically say, "here's one story of how my life could be seen, more like a victim, and here's another story of how my life could be seen, which is a life of extraordinary possibilities and choice." and you basically sayou want us all to think about how we choose the narrative of our own life. because how we choose to see ourselves says everything about kind of how we do end up seeing ourselves. am i right? >> yes. if i were to ask you, you know, "why are you here-- what is it that ended up making you do what you to today?" you along with anyone else, if you were to answer that question, you could give me any one of three versions of that story. you could te