i'm sorry. go find some other planet to destroy your stuff. >> hello. thank you. [inaudible] a couple of comments and questions. >> you have to make it quick. >> thank you. a tweet, a long list of faiths nasa reality show be more popular than jersey shore. civilization dpeend on it. >> so thank you for the -- she's like my pr agent. thank you for the index that is very rich and fleshed out. also, sin i have tweeted on the universe often and on space i have tossed in many of the tweets throughout the book. they are like biscuits if you earned your way to the point i'll hand you a tweet. one tweet if you can read it closer to the microphone. >> would a nasa reality show be more popular than jersey shore?

civilization's future depend on that. >> thank you for that. a lot of effort went in to this and the organization of the effort was made possible. there's an editor's name on the cover of the book. and to coordinate the thoughts in to something coherent requires editor. i want to thank them for that. did you have a question?

i can check this thing out. engage further in this conversation. >> you want to learn more about [laughter] >> something that i could, perhaps, to weed out to my friends. >> not everyone is a reader out there, i understand. so, i am trying to hit every angle here. i tweet, right. baena also hosts a radio show called star talk-radio where we -- it is a lure reverence. a comedian as micro posts. my guests are not scientists. people hewn from pop culture and we explore ways the science influences their lives. i resent that i recommend you

check it out. morgan freeman, john stewart, joan rivers. i said to joan, joan, what do you do with the aliens and the come? she said, i don't care if they come, just so long as there are single and jewish. [laughter] so it is a celebration of science, and i'm just trying to get out there so that people are not -- don't fear it. modern times it takes media to be fluent is that everyone is doing the same thing at the same time as you are in the 1960's. watching walter cronkite. >> just to clarify, stuck talk-radio. >> i will try to make this as brief as i possibly can. one of the lost generation you just spoke about. thirty-two. i will be 34 this fall. i went out myself with my father

, the editor in chief of the local newspaper and watched the missiles go up until challenger happened. the shuttle happening in my time was cancelled. i have an 8-year-old daughter who sings along with symphony of science with your voice and others talk about it. >> thank you. [applause] >> this series of creative youtube videos where it takes publicly available clips and put it into a beat. very creative. he's a popular. >> she sings along among other things. her favorite is a taste from earth, and she talks about killing herself. i want to say thank you to the other little girl who is exactly my daughter's age. >> update. >> coming back from that, there is a deep understanding as a physics major indicator of our connection to the universe. as much as i want to believe in life elsewhere, as a scientist

of want to see it. and so we have seen that somewhere else i feel like it is part of that defense motivation that you think of and mention for us to get off planet. i don't care if it's an asteroid. i don't care if it's the sun going red and 5 billion years. if we stay here we are doomed, and as far as we know, we are it >> this is a point that was made by stephen hawking murray said we have to be a multi plant species, otherwise we are doomed because something bad can happen to earth, a virus, astra, what have you. here is my rebuttal, if i may. >> math is the question? >> yes,. [laughter] >> do you feel that the motivation like that is valuable as a component to make the economics are part of feeding the species, part of the our country, part of feeding ourselves.

>> i don't think it is a good enough driver because i don't believe it. i'll tell you why. and talking made this point. we have to be a multi plant species, otherwise, all the eggs in one basket. you go extinct. what might be that which threatens our, an asteroid, a killer asteroid the size of mount everest, the one that renders 70 percent of eight species extinct 65 million years ago, the yucatan peninsula of mexico. it was in mexico back then, by the way. [laughter] whenever the dinosaurs called it. so here is the thing. if we are going to be a multi plant species, and i have into to this before, we would have to terraform some other planet. it would have to be mars because no one knows what to do with the house -- with pianist. terraform morris. if we have the power to terraform mars and the technology to ship a billion people there, we can deflect the

asteroid. i mean, the scale of that operation relative to whatever it would take to protect us, i think there is no contest. you deflect the astra, find a cure for the virus, stop the volcano, realigned the plates of the earth. i don't see that as our realistic solution to a problem that we might face. what i do see as the solution is a solution to that problem rather than running away to another planet so that a it can become toast. and then you have to plants, and the asteroid is headed to one of them, what you do with everybody on that planet? sorry. we are the safe ones. goodbye. it is not a practical -- [laughter] if you have the power of a deal engineering on that scale you don't need to leave birth. you make earth exactly as you

wanted to be. you have the power enough to fix mars you can fix surf in any way you choose. this is my contention. >> if you have the power enough to fix marsh, the tomb of power and up to get somewhere else of the solar system. >> possibly. yes. so we will go there to. the motivation would not be, so that we will die on earth. i just all see that. i am not convinced by the arguments. real quick. >> okay. so he started out with the three motivators , and one of them dropped out really quick. isn't the whole kind of glorification of kings and what not, isn't that really just fear of death and sort of wanted to have your name and the history book alongside buzz aldrin so long as there are history books? isn't that still with us? >> it could be with the individual. >> not big enough. >> you don't control that much money. >> not big enough for humanity.

>> i'm talking about large scale projects that never come major fraction of your gross national product, gross domestic product. human capital or financial capital. the cost doesn't -- your tombstone and a permanent the same thing. so the pyramid, yeah, they want to live for our come -- forever. they had the power to do it. people did it in the service of the pharaoh. he has the power. the people built the pyramids to not. it's a power thing. and it is a fear factor as well. so -- >> we are all too small. >> to small as individuals, unless you're a king. in fact, our version of the king to do this would be bill gates. bill, take us to mars. [laughter] it would be like a vanity project, and he would be like our king spending the crown

jewels to do this. [laughter] talk to him. all column up, and we will find out. >> okay. >> i have two questions. >> sure. >> did you celebrate by day yesterday? >> i did. [applause] for those of you who are not deep enough to know what that sentence just meant, on march march 14th if you write it out in american-style, it would be three / 14, and that is by. and so the geese out there celebrate it. and so it is a really geeky thing to do, and i tweeted. there was pressure for me to tweet something. so i tweeted it. i said, i am not out of control. i got by gentle decimal places. that's good enough. that's good enough to get the circumference of the earth to a 1,000 of an inch. so that's good enough for me, but, yes, i did celebrate pied

de. >> my second question is, what is your favorite three numbers in by? >> pick three digits? i like the first three because that gets you most of the way there. okay? a cake. thank you. [applause] >> you refer to engineers and biologists. how is the historian important for our future? >> the historian. everything i know about human conduct that we need to put into play going toward comes to me from an analysis history. so if you don't know the conduct of humans and what motivates them and their relationships between nations, just, you know, go back home. you're not useful out there if he wants to bring real solutions to real problems. so historians are really important in this, particularly

historians to put things in at most of them do it ratheh is than just retell a timeline of events. context matters. attitudes matter. cultures matter. and so, i don't want to know just what were you fought and what can replace tim, i want to know what was in the hearts and minds of the people who were in that country, the attitudes they had, what led what country to war against another for 100 years. what led one country to not have force. what's going on in their culture or their mind. so by all means, want to major in history, go for it. it would be harder to find a job, but other than that -- [laughter] yes. the last two questions. yes. these better be also questions. the pressure is on. >> i just have a quick question and a quick comment. my question is, you often talk about the whole government factor, the government has to do

a first and then private enterprise. >> not because i wanted to be that way. that is just by reading history. >> but do you believe that to get further than the edge of the solar system we need set unified , one government, one people as humanity to get out there? >> no. you need another law of physics. [laughter] the problem is harder than just whether you combine governments. if you want to leave the solar system and visit the nearest star and do it on the fastest spaceship we ever launched and you hitch a ride on the craft, you would arrive at the nearest star to the sun 50,000 years later. so you need to be really fertile or we need some other way. some other understanding of the fabric of space time because travel on those times gaels are

incommensurate with the longevity of the human -- of the human individual. so, to the moon is a few days to mars a few years. that fits within our 80 year life expectancy. traveling to the other stars is not. so for the moment i am good with the telescope to give me there. and there are plenty of destinations, including a whole new swath of dwarf plants, pluto included, get over it. [laughter] to visit. nobody says you have to visit a traditional planet. there are many rocky surfaces that would welcome our footprints. >> and i just have a quick comment. i read this calvin and hobbes strip once, and it said, the way right now that we know that there is intelligent life out there is, it has not tried to contact us yet. and i have to say, i am completely -- i completely agree with that. >> i have said that same thing, but in a more severe weight.

i said aliens have actually visited us. okay? two branches of that comment. one of them that actually visited us, they landed in times square and no one noticed. so or in hollywood and no one noticed. but another one, more terrifying prospect is that they have visited us, they have inspected to and we are and have concluded that there is no sign of intelligent life on earth. yes. i have to ask tell of your. >> eleven. >> eleven. okay. welcome. is the pastor baton? >> no. >> okay. you have a question. >> yes. >> your tweets in your book, they just rant and? are there for fun? because in chapter four you're talking about aliens. you say any suspicions that they will be evil is more a reflection of our fear about how we would treat an alien species

are found them than any actual knowledge about how alien species would treat us. and then we go through space tweet seven, you ask, 40,000 students, mr. replan said. aliens are safe. listening for them right now. [laughter] >> okay. [laughter] [applause] i warned you about my tweet, didn't i? i forgot why i talked about sneezing inside a space helmet because that is the really kind of nasty thing to think about. you don't want to have a head cold love your space walking. that treats, just random thoughts that come to me. i don't invent them. i have them anyway. then i make them at tweet and share these -- another one that i had was, if human -- if our blood were based not on iron turning red but instead on

copper turn your screen then what color would the stoplights b? [laughter] i'm just saying. it was about i had. so i tweeted it. people, well, my mind blonde. i can't figure it out. oh, my gosh. one other one. this is the last thing. there is 85 it is a url short mayor. you have a big fat url, you put it in there and he gives you a short one so that it is easy to e-mail. i decided to test it. i took the name of the url in there, and it got longer. a hat trick that. the url shore near made its own url longer, and has nothing to do with astrophysics.

here is one for you, this one will keep you awake at night. if pinocchio declared, my nose is about to grow what would his nose at shipley do? because it began to grow it meant he was telling the truth and should not of grown. if it doesn't grow, if it was lying commission of groan. i tweeted at one time. people said mine alone. thank you all for coming tonight. [applause] >> during the republican and democratic conventions, we are asking middle and high school students to send a message to the president as part of this

year's c-span didn't cam video documentary competition. students will answer the question, what is the most important issue the president to consider? for a chance to win the grand prize of $5,000.50 thousand in total prize available. c-span students can video competition is open to students grades 6-12. for complete details and rules go online. >> i think you can sum up this very timely book. i hope you enjoy it. it is -- i think it can be summed up in one sentence. seldom, if ever in our history have we seen such a concerted series of vicious personal attacks directed against any president of the united states. completely funded in this case and a pair of brothers, big oil barons with the assistance of an

all too compliant american media and you add those three elements together and you get the obama machine. i would just like to say a little bit about each of those elements and then open it up for questions until c-span tells us that the cameras are turned off. and, you know, let's start with a hate directed against obama. first of all, i have to say, i think criticism of any american president is fair game. i am part of the white house press corps. i go to the white house every day. i would have been there today if i wasn't here. every day in front of the white house on pennsylvania avenue there is a crowd of people protesting something. and i love that. i really do. i make a point of checking and what they are there for what the issue of the days. a very healthy part of our democracy. and criticism of the president,

of course, has been around for a long time. the of this presidential campaign in history, 1800. john adams and thomas jefferson, the things that were said. but the followers against each other. so, but with president obama it has been a tax not on his policies so much as on him as a person. and we have not seen that to my don't believe, and i went back and did a lot of research on presidential campaigns in history. we have not seen that directed, that severe and that of lee directed against since abraham lincoln. we think of lincoln, of course, st. abraham. he was not thought of that way during his lifetime. it was only after he was assassinated. when he came to washington he was introduced to the nation by the kentucky statesman as

follows. abraham lincoln is the man above the media hype. he passes the six footmark by an institute. he is rawboned, channel gated, bowlegs, not need competent showed thomas lopsided, a shapeless skeleton in a very tough, very dirty unwholesome stand. his lips protrude beyond the natural level of the face but are pale and smeared with tobacco juice. his teeth the filthy. [laughter] this is your president. your new president of the united states. at the same time, another paper published this profile of mr. lincoln. mr. lincoln stand 6 feet tall and his socks, which he changes once every ten days. his anatomy is composed mostly a bonus and when walking he resembles the offspring of a happy marriage between add derek and the wind melt.

his head is shaped something like a rebel. he can hardly be called handsome, though he is much better looking since he had the smallpox. [laughter] yes. all right. well, flash forward. president obama called a racist, marxist, fascist, dictator, muslim. that is not meant as a positive turn, by the way. a man of faith, a muslim, meaning a terrorist. and not see, a foreigner, a jackass. rush limbaugh calls in that. a liar. of course on the floor of the house. and a socialist. this is an obsession with obama as a person. it is what others have called them. the phrase i use in the book, the other in a president obama. they have to kind of prove that he is not like us. and though some of it, not all

of it, but some of it, the color of the skin. he is black. we are white. he is the first african-american president. but also, he is not a true american. the whole birth certificate nonsense. all to show that he is in something different, something else, something foreign. it is really this obsession to try to destroy barack obama personally. david horowitz, one of the most conservative commentators out there actually calls this. he himself calls it the obama arrangements under. and they just cannot help themselves. i don't know how many of you have heard about this. goes on. last week. the leading federal judge in montana sends out an e-mail on his official judicial e-mail account to his friends, joke about barack obama asking his

mom, why am i black and you are white. she says, well, i'm surprised your father didn't work and we had sex. sex with a dog. he did this on his official federal e-mail and said, you know, i don't usually send jokes out to friends like this, but i just got this one was particularly funny. that is how sick these people are, and that is what we have seen over and over again directed not so much against -- you can disagree with president obama's house plan, that was not strong enough for government takeover of health care. you can disagree with him on taxes or whatever, but this is against him personally trying to destroy and discredit him personally. the obama head machine, and it is not just fox news. it is out there because the couple of people that most americans have never heard of, the famous brothers, now famous.

and, again, we have seen corporate sponsored attacks against presidents before, particularly franklin delano roosevelt, by the way, the dupont brothers. and there were three of them at the time. they actually banded together, put their money together for something called the liberal elite to deny fdr a second term. and then with bill clinton, of course, funding all of the investigations that led to the on and on. the big articles in the american spectator. but nothing compared to the money and the organization that we have seen. the heads of coke industries, they are the third and fourth richest man in america, people in america. you would know about bill gates and warren buffett.

number three in number four. combined wealth of $50 billion. they have put more money in -- by the way, i have to say this. they do some good things, particularly david, the wealthiest man in new york city. you thought michael blumberg was. nope. he finds the metropolitan opera, a big supporter of it. the metropolitan museum of art, cancer research centers around the country. most of the money goes into political activities. and they are everywhere. the heritage foundation in washington d.c. the cato institute, when it started. some of you may now know that cato kind of went its own independent way. they are now suing the cato institute to get it back to be a totally controlled operation. people, americans for prosperity , one of the most

active political organizations today, all funded. freedom works. john kaysix in ohio. scott walker in wisconsin. everywhere, california a couple of years ago, measure, prop. 23 on the ballot to repeal the cleanly -- new clean car standards but in my arms schwarzenegger. the measure to repeal the standards which lost. totally funded by the brothers. legislation in west virginia to overturn the new mining state laws that were put in place after that last mine disaster. the effort to overturn mining safety regulations, funded by the brothers. i have, in the book, page with 53 different organizations. a lot of them, by the way, research centers on college campuses run the country, all

for the purpose of disputing the existence of global warming and fighting to do away with any government regulations, nothing to do with climate control. fifty-seven different organizations that i was able to find that our either partially or totally funded by the brothers. the region is so great that someone has called them. [indiscernible] bank of all arms out there. and they don't do it alone. they get together twice a year with their corporate buddies from around the country and raise money for white -- right wing political causes. two days before the book came out, i was so happy this happened because i could tell people, i'm not exaggerating. i'm not making this up. they had their latest in palm springs. and i tell you, sheldon adelson was there, by the way. they have routine meetings attended by republican

governors. kaysix, walker, chris christie, bob macdonald from virginia. i'm sure rick scott. they have all been there. supreme court justices. clarence thomas, alito. they have all been there. these meetings. and this one, where the book came out. just about a month or so ago. they raised $100 million in one week into the fee barack obama this year for president. think about that. if you look at the super packs for romney and santorum and ron paul and newt gingrich up and tell super tuesday, they had spent a total for all of $53 million. and in that one weekend they raised 100 billion. so they are huge. there were out there, and they will stay in they will do anything. of course, it is a lot easier for them out since citizens united because you're not only raising the limit corporate money to be a renter poor which

corporations are paying its bills. they have also not been able to do without the assistance of the nation's media. ..

>> he is one of the most exciting and interesting scientists. he grew up in london and studied in cambridge, england. and he became a computer scientist and then developed the idea that we might live essentially forever. or at least a thousand years, 10,000 years, some modest time span like that. oddly enough, the more time that i spent with aubrey de grey, the more that i found some of his ideas, not his predictions, not his hopes for a thousand years or more, but some of his ideas about longevity to be worth taking seriously, to be worth listening to. >> host: such as? >> guest: aubrey argues that aging should be viewed as something not immutable, but something that we can study and understand and perhaps fight

effectively. and that we can do more about aging now than we ever could before. aubrey is extremely eccentric and controversial with good reason. i think most people in the field of gerontology, the study of aging, the signs of aging, agree now that aging probably is something that we can understand better than that we can learn to control better than we do now. so that is millennial news. that is the news that we have been looking for for ages. aubrey is a good spokesperson for that optimistic point of view as anyone on the planet. >> host: in the last 50 years, professor, how have we

manipulated our ability to control this aging? >> guest: we are aging more slowly than our parents and grandparents. we are very happy about that. we like to a little slower than we are now. a lot of that is in direct benefits of our overall progress sanitation in developed countries, added life expectancy. antibiotics, vaccines, adding to life expectancy in the 20th century. now we are doing better with the elderly, people in their 60s, 70s, 80s have better life expectancy than people of the same age, generation back or two generations back.

overall we are better at living healthy lives in treating diseases, making life comfortable for ourselves. again, that is in the countries where medicine has advanced, sanitation has advanced, there are billions of people in the world who don't have those benefits. now the question is can we study this head-on into we do something about the deterioration from the 50s and 60s on. can we do anything about that that would give us another 20 or 30 or 40 years or more.

>> host: the 20th century, the 19th and 20th century, what was the life expectancy about 40 years? >> guest: a little bit better than that. the turn of the 20th century, it was 47 or 48 years. now we are up to about 80 years. an enormous gain in just the last century. >> host: how do we get to 1000? [laughter] >> guest: i have to say before we talk about getting to 1000 years, there is can we and should we. can we and would we really want to. i think both of those questions are complicated. the technical side is very controversial and complicated. the philosophical side, the bioethical questions.

those may be the most difficult questions to resolve. i find myself deeply convicted when talking about aubrey de grey. but when you want to talk about the technical sides of the question, how could we do it, there are maybe seven broad classes of problems that we all run into as we get older. and aubrey de grey divides them very neatly into problems, inside ourselves, and between ourselves, problems and the nuclear is an outside ridiculous, too many cells here, too many cells there. a funny problem called cross-linking. all of our molecular machinery kind of sticks together in places and that makes us

imprinted inside and out. and that is why as we get older, the cross-links are not as flexible as these to be great if you can attack could attack those, we can do something cosmetic about aging and also the more serious problems with cross-links, but they cost inside our bodies. >> host: is the researcher work being done on this? >> guest: there is research being done in all of those seven different kinds of aging problems. there are enzymes that can go through your body and for those cross-links. the trouble is there is molecular scissors that can tell the bad cross-links through the good stuff that makes our molecular machinery run. so they are not specific enough to be helped. if you could teach them where to smith and we're not de smet, then you might have a useful

medical school. >> host: one more example, on the technical side. >> guest: if you look at where our energy comes from, our molecular factor called mitochondria, the energy production takes place there. in effect, that is our power plant. the mitochondria are scattered through every cell. they had some dna of their own. most of our dna is passed into the nuclear us, the dark all at the center of every cell. but there is some dna in the mitochondria. they developed mutations. those strands of dna. faster than the dna that is relatively safe and protected inside the nuclear us.

the work of energy production could keep going without deteriorating mitochondria building up. that is an argument that a few biologists have made before aubrey pulls together some interesting research that pulls together what could be done. who knows, maybe that can work some day. very controversial and a little bit far out. my personal favorite is a graveyard idea. there is garbage that builds up in the cells, byproducts of metabolism, if you can figure out how to help the body eliminate that garbage, and

adjustable stop than our own bodies housekeeping enzymes can't clean up, then maybe we could live for decades or centuries longer. aubrey says we are the living things that have figured out how to eat every part of our body, including these indigestible things that our own bodies can't clear out. the bugs and germs and that bacteria in graveyards, like the one in cambridge, centuries old graveyards where aubrey de grey lived, are specialists in devouring every last bit of it. his idea is to cultivate some of the bacteria, figure out their secrets, figure out how they can devour our indigestible is -- and gather them in the cells.

>> host: no mention of diet and exercise and lifestyle? are those disparate real. >> guest: those are essential. that is really what we have right now. when we are talking to a man like aubrey tigre, we are talking to a future. here in the present, exercise, diet, getting enough sleep. exercise and diet are absolutely key. in fact, calorie restrictions, manipulating died in a simple way is the one clearly proven method of adding some time to lifespan of all kinds of living things. it has not yet proven that it will work for us. there are people trying. it will work for worms and mice. it will work for fish. there are all sorts of species that will benefit from calorie restrictions. again, you get into the question, do you want us?

is this really a game for you if you cut your calorie consumption by a really sizable direction. most of us are voting of the restaurants, we are not choosing to cut our calories way down. yes, absolutely. exercise and diet, chicken soup kind of recommendations that people have made for centuries. >> host: what are some of the ethical considerations of extending life up to 200 or 300 or more years? >> guest: it is huge, i think. one of the biggest ethical concerns that most of us think of right away its population. the population explosion on the planet is already dangerous.

if you start suddenly adding decades or even centuries to the human lifespan, what are you doing for the population explosion? you are going to add an enormous environmental problem that may completely swamp us. all the arguments against that, we have a population explosion -- mostly children and babies wise -- we want more antibiotics

to continue. so why should we argue against the antiaging pioneers if we wanted health above all in the last 100 years. why not continue on the same path in the next argument? it is a pretty tough one to argue against, at least, i have found. the most difficult guy to argue with that i have ever run into, even though he is taking this outlandish position -- if you have a beer with aubrey de grey, he will have six beers to your one beer. he is a very deep director, as he is one to admit. he will say that every one of

these commonsense, logical arguments that come to your mind against his program of living 1000 years is deeply flawed and he can knock it down in a second. and some of his counter arguments are really worth taking seriously. i will give you another one. most of us feel that there is something about mortality that gives seriousness to our right lives. if we could be granted another 200 or thousand years, our lives would be rendered less meaningful. why would we need to try to accomplish anything tomorrow or next year when there is a next

century or millennium to get around it or not most of us feel is that mortality really structures our entire identity for better and for worse. what happens if you take away all of that scaffolding and structure? you are just sort of a portal of jelly. you have a nightmarish feeling that you would cease to be you if you were granted an extra thousand years. aubrey's comeback to come back to that is if you don't like it, if you can come up with that formula that lets you live that many years, if you don't like it, you don't have to take it. that is his very simple reply. anybody that is so attached to getting older and dieting can go ahead and do it and they are not going to be forced to live forever. again, this is a tough argument to combat. he argues that if he had the

option, if that little bottle of pills were sitting magically at the table at breakfast tomorrow morning and the doctor said yes, in fact, it looks like it worked, then you could live for 1000 years, how many of us really would hesitate before we took the pills? i know that i have deep ambivalence about the idea of living for centuries. i have had arguments with aubrey up, down, sideways for years. yet i have to confess that every time i read a story in "the new york times" or in one of the technical journals that suggests that a breakthrough has been made and we really do have some way of governing the life expectancy of mice, we have found something that reminds us of one of aubrey's arguments,

the parts of aging weekend to her. i find myself involuntarily dealing with the most irrational hope. maybe the guy is right. maybe this program can work. maybe we can give ourselves all of these extra years. i think that is very deep and nice. the yes and the now both run very deep in this subject. deeper than words. >> host: how old is aubrey? >> guest: i find his age very easy to remember, he is 10 years older than me. when i met him he was 38. i have to say that he is aging at about the same rate as the rest of us, so i might. for all of the talk and all of the energy, aging is not going down very much on this planet right now.

aubrey argues that what he is doing is not that he wants to live forever. it's that he says this is the greatest single contribution that a human being can make to the welfare of humanity. something like 100,000 people die per day on this planet because of this tragedy called aging. if he can stop that, he would contribute more than alzheimer's or diabetes or any of the other old ashes of old age.

>> host: who is funding his research? is their government money you're in the u.s. for that? >> guest: there is money going to this research from government. the united states has a national institute of aging. a funding of alzheimer's and the more speculative research programs like the one where talking about now. we talked to middle of the road donors who give to aubrey's private foundation. something called the methuselah

foundation. he is not getting rich from these foundations and they are not sponsoring a huge amount of research. but this work is going on. unfortunately, the national institute of aging is a very poor stepsister and the national institutes of health. there is much more money available, for instance, for research on cancer say, then the research on aging. that is another thing that emerged from me. as i studied this question. i began to find it problematic. the single biggest risk factor for cancer is age.

aging is not single biggest risk factor. many gerontologist did the same thing. we could be spending a lot more time trying to understand aging. we swim in time in a way that makes this age. but we don't know what it is that makes us able to produce consciousness and we don't know what it is in our bodies that is making this age. and if we could describe that, if we could understand exactly

what it is we mean by aging, then we would take a giant step forward toward the visionary program of slowing the clock or stopping the clock for reversing the motion of the hands and getting younger. whatever the complexity is, the ethical complexity of the fight against aging -- i think if i to understand aging is at least as important as anything else we are doing in medicine now. there is a reason why we have talked about these questions. ever since the book of genesis, adam and eve and the snake in the garden. all of the world's first religions, the world's first

stories turning on the question of aging and death and can we stop it. i think those questions are still a steep for us as they ever were. >> host: jonathan weiner is a professor here at columbia university. he won the pulitzer prize for his book, "the beak of the finch." what was that book about? >> guest: that was about evolution in the galapagos islands. i have a fond place in my heart for that book. it is one of the most extraordinary stories that i ever ran across. to biologist at princeton university, peter and rosemary grant, go to darwin's island.

they go every year. they have been doing this since 1973. they can find a little desert island in the middle of august, and island that darwin himself never saw. and they watched the finches and documented evolution in action. evolution by preceding year by year, they have watched it, they have seen it, they have measured it and they understand it in exquisite detail. and they are doing what darwin himself never imagined possible. he thought it would take geological ages to see evolution in action. that no mortal could see it. it turns out that we can watch. we can watch it on darwin's island with darwin's finches. i have gone back twice to visit the galapagos islands and many times to visit peter and rosemary grant and look over their shoulders. i think it is wonderful that

they are still doing this research all these years later. he never retired. unofficially they are still there every year in the galapagos, watching evolution. >> host: we have been talking with jonathan weiner here at columbia university. this is his most recent book, "long for this world: the strange science of immortality." professor, we thank you. >> thank you very much, it's a pleasure. >> during the republican and democratic conventions, we are asking middle and high school students to send a message to the president as part of this year's c-span studentcam video documentary competition. this will answer the question, what is the most important issue the president should consider in 2013. for a chance to win the grand prize of $5000. there is a $50,000 in total prizes available. c-span studentcam video competition. open to grades six through 12. go online to studentcam.org. what are you reading this

summer? booktv wants to know. >> there are two books about al qaeda and the taliban. steve coll is looking at one, except jones is working on the other one. david marinus is working on another biography, at this time. there are lots of great books that have come out every year. journalists and historians are the authors. a book on steve jobs is a perfect example of that. it was in international best selling phenomenon, and with good reason because of all the things we can learn from it. >> what are you currently reading? i read a collectively, actually, i read a book called blood knots, i read about the 1948

campaign. that was really wild. harry truman and henry wallace and tom dooley, the first election after the war. a book about george bush and how he decided to go to war. my wife just finished catherine the great. so i have to go back and get involved in that. i read a lot of magazines, a lot of essays. i opened up a little correspondence by a poet of the name of donald hall. there is something that he wrote in the new yorker about growing old and it really spoke to me in a way. we had a little exchange. i am in all great writers. i don't pretend to be a great writer. i am energetic and pretty good sometimes, but the greater great writers move me in ways that nothing in life does. >> for more information on this and other summer reading list, visit booktv.org.

.. this generation of kids who are, perhaps, the first in large numbers to have grown up taking psychotropic medications. how did you get the idea to do

that and why and how did that idea come to you? >> well, thank you for having me in interviewing me. i appreciate it. i get the idea, a column in the new york times that was a case study of a young woman who had been almost 20 years taking into depressants. the column mentioned that there was very little scientific research that could talk about the way that these drugs had affected children development as they're growing up. and said that at me curious. the studies don't exist, but i have been taking medication since i was a teenager. i figured, there must be huge numbers of people in my position, and i would be curious to hear their stories and get their take and how it is turned out for them. >> to define it was a difficult problem? we have so much conversation, so much debate on the subject right

now in america, and that has been true for decades. you chart that really nicely in your book, how the conversation shaped up, how largest chains of the years, how it has or have that -- hasn't dovetailed . you were taking what is essentially a very compassionate view from the start because you were looking to give kids, young adults, the people you're talking to, voice. did you find that you were up against a lot of preconceived notions and trying to get started? were you allowed to kind of have a blank slate and a full work? >> i was not up against my preconceived notions, but i think that there were a lot of societal preconceived notions. when i was trying to interview experts one thing i did find how medications has affected young people, a clinical experience especially with researchers it was not an idea there were cast in the thinking about.

so used to debating it in these early by very terms. kids over medicated or do these drugs work to resolve symptoms. together the more nuanced look at it, like what is the quality of the experience, and the question. >> it's a new question, very fresh question. did you find that the researchers are happy that you were doing this or this sort of stumped by the whole enterprise? >> in buried. some of them were happy i was doing it, especially the conditions of the people who did both research and saw patients on a regular basis. they thought it was a good question to ask, and they had, indeed, practiced. the researchers were of a more focused on what the study said. we don't have these studies. there were a little stumped. >> there are some studies you pointed to. a very few, strikingly few given how important the topic this is. can you tell me about what does

exist. >> and i should distinguish between social science researchers and also the working scientists. the scientists, it's not a question that was on their radar screen. the social scientist, there is a small group of them who i think our doing some really fascinating in pioneering work. during a formal version of what i do and the book which is to ask young people about the qualitative experience that taking medications and have it in shape to them and ship their identity. and it wasn't too hard to find them. they were extremely excited that i was exploring this topic. i was extremely excited that they were exploring this topic because it was great to be able to have a little bit of a larger body of research to draw on. >> and it's great to be able to really bring a greater richness to the debate. it has really been pretty sterile and has gone along all of the same lines.

a quick solution to complicated problems. and it is really fantastic that you took the bait beyond the simple story lines that we have become all too familiar with. now, you said you really didn't go into it with any big conceptions. you had an open mind. you had your own concrete experience to draw on that demystify the subject for you in the first place. talk a bit about your own experience and how it led into that project and lead you to connect better. >> sure. i would say that my depression and in retrospect also my anxiety, all of it was not identified as such then, i was about 12 years old. a very dramatic medical experience. scoliosis. it went very badly. i was having trouble socially at school because i was having to leave for medical appointments all the time. it made me very self-conscious about my body.

i developed an eating disorder as a result of some of those issues, and that was what landed me in therapy. my parents found out about it. i was in therapy for couple of years. did not find it to be very useful. they thought my underlying issues are not the eating disorder, but the depression and anxiety. but then i lived in a small town. on the couple of therapists, and other methods are options to draw on, and i kept wishing that there was some of the solution. i heard about medication, and i knew people who were taking medication. i kept wishing somebody would offer to me. and nobody did. and so finally i took the initiative and talked to my parents and my pediatrician about myself. >> held review at that point? >> at that point i was 17, but i have been thinking about medication for at least two years. >> that's a long time. 12-17 is a really long time to suffer with anxiety and

depression in getting therapy. that sounds like it was not terribly effective. >> and that was another thing that i think made me more confident in my decision to ask for medication. i think it distinguishes my experience from the experiences that i detail where their kids were much younger. they did not get a say in it. they didn't know anything about the medication. and they didn't even go aware of the way that they were. i went for years being acutely aware of this, as i say in the book, writing poetry, in this poetry. hoping for a way out. so a distinction between people who start medication at an older age like i did and those to begin it much younger. >> this sounds as though you had a really well-developed vocabulary for understanding what you were going through and also a fair bit of knowledge about mental health, treatment

options. what year was this are what we years were this? >> this would have been the late 90's through the turn of the millennium. >> so we were already pretty well into the present era. the descendants had come out on the market. a lot of media reporting around from where you point out in the book, at the beginning, and extremely positive, to the point of jubilant. in retrospect to you think that media coverage was helpful? t think it gave you unrealistic expectations? >> i think it's the beginning of actually helpful. give me the confidence to ask for medication. like i said, nobody was offering it to me. i felt like i really needed it. in retrospect, when i looked at this, especially the paradigm of the chemical imbalance which we learn as pretty oversimplified. so many factors that really go into these mood and behavior

disorders, i was -- it did lead me to think that medication be a quick fix. and it was at first. it was working really well for me for a number of years. when it stopped working it was really a shock. i was not prepared to think that this was going to be a continuing struggle. >> were you able to continue their pure find better therapy over the years once you have had success with medication? >> it took me awhile. it took until i had a couple of really bad nervous episodes where i was experiencing symptoms and i felt like i needed something beyond the medication. also, i was able to find therapists who i thought were smart, sensitive, and had a really new wants to take on what i was going through. >> i think it is important to give people who are watching a sense of the real depth of what you were going through.

i think the people tend to see someone who has kind of, the other in the sense that you survived, together, successful. not understand the real seriousness of the symptoms that lead parents to be willing to get their children medication or, in your case, could lead a teenager to want to take medication which is very unusual can you talk about that? we can hear the words depression and anxiety, but in the book you tell the story in a way that makes it very concrete and allows us to understand, beyond just the diagnostic word, what it felt like, what your dated debt was like. >> i personally felt that i was just like along through live. it wasn't as though i was suicidal. there were times when i did feel very desperate during that initial time. but i just felt that life was exhausting and that it was just getting through every day, just

a task and just onerous and the burden. i was walking through my is the way i would describe it. and i just didn't take a lot of joy out of life, and i saw my peers, not in fact the happiest time of your life, but people tell you that they're supposed to be, which is not helpful. but i did see, you know, tears, what seems to be a much easier time and a much more carefree time. it just seemed like such a pity in the ways to go through so many years to feeling like this. >> did your parents know is the degree to which you are suffering? >> they did notice to a certain extent, but -- and this is very common, and i talked about this in the book. the children and teenagers who have internalizing conditions like anxiety and depression, parents notoriously underestimate what the kids in

going through, and i don't say this as a way to up. [inaudible] these are very internal experiences that the children don't always share, especially teenagers. i hate to say i was not forthcoming with my parents. i did not want to burden them with what was going through. >> interesting the way you describe your experience in therapy as a horrible intrusion. you described of the people. would it to their stores in a moment. also experienced in the same weight, and that that was very interesting but as i don't think adults come to experience their be in that way. >> exactly. it's not like a punishment. it felt like, you have an eating disorder and we don't know what to do with you. we're going to put you in therapy. i'm sure my parents did not mean it that way in any way. they were just trying to add to the best that they could, and i think that is the case with most parents. they don't know what to do, and i think therapy is a reasonable for step. my parents were hesitant to give me medication.

i think a lot of parents, and you say this, and we have issues. it is not something that they jumped to readily. they are excited to the tickets and medication. they have concerns about it. the problem is that i think, especially for teenagers, and even children who are not very good at articulating their feelings, it really takes quite a skilled therapist the pull out those feelings and to really make progress with the child. and so i think that medication can be in no way really anonymous in a great way. it can be a way of keeping your private problems private if you want to. but also feeling like they're making some progress. >> it's interesting. you describe your feelings wants to begin medication. it was liberating, freeing an analogy to be the person you knew you were.

this really runs counter to the the that people have of medication, especially with kids are teenagers. the phrase was often used, a chemical straitjacket, something that turns kids into zombies, something that makes the plant, let's say, with society's demands thomas of the opposite of anything that is liberating. >> this partly depends on the age of the child. i have had a happy childhood, so i knew what it was to be happy in and what it was to be deeply unhappy. so i think even very and children can be aware and deeply aware that something is really wrong with them. i interviewed some of my peers described knowing that there were different, knowing that there were depressed and anxious of very young age, from kindergarten onward. and so i don't think you have to be 17 years old or 15 years old to know something is wrong. i think even your own children

to feel that. >> a lot of people for the book, a lot of them adults also, a lot of researchers, clinicians', but you centered your narrative basically on the stories of five people. clare, elisabeth pump, paul, caleb, and alex. how did you come to people in the first place? how did you come to focus on these five? >> well, the first thing i did is look for anybody who would talk to me about their experiences. that could be difficult because there are still a lot of stigmas around this. i was not sure yet whether i would be even to use -- able to use their names. i found a lot of people on line to speak too impatient communities and communities centered around the use of medication. what i look for in selecting -- i gradually narrow down the group, you know, from several dozen tow finally those five. what i looked for were people

who felt that they have had a complicated experience with medication, but who were not zealots on either side because i felt that the store had been told. we heard about the marital transformations, and we heard about the people who believe that nobody should ever take medication. and so i wanted to represent a range of experiences in the range of backgrounds and also arrange a psychiatric conditions >> and you did, and you tell very rich stories that really don't reduce these people to their symptoms, which is great. he placed them in the context of their lives, some of which, most of which are somewhat difficult, at least. one of which is awful, and that is the story of paul, the former foster child. can we talk about historic? at think that is the one that really stayed with me the most. probably the least typical of the experience that most middle-class kids have. and yet it is children or former

children like paul who are really at the epicenter of a lot of the debate going on right now about medicaid. >> absolutely. one reason i wanted to include a former foster child is foster children are medicated at many times the rate of their counterparts, even their counterparts are on public insurance. it has been very much in the media, as you say. the scandal stories about kids being massively over medicated and wrongly medicated. wanted to see what that felt like. the experience, i would say, and for looking at a spectrum of people from the most positive to the most negative, he will certainly, one of the most negative experiences with medication. he was taken from his parents' home when he was five years old. there were not married. his father was abusive. he lived in a neighborhood where he was beat up by older children basically indoctrinated in tech

and versions of that big things. and he bounced around the foster care system from placement to pleasant to placement, just longing for somebody to adopt some. >> the story of the one place that you tell which is actually a therapeutic placement mentally temporary in short-term which was not explained to him that he loves what he wanted to stay with his parents, he was yanked away from them for reasons that he does not understand with other kids coming and being adopted, that is just are pricking story. >> it really is, and i think what makes the whole story even more heartbreaking is the he was given medication which i don't think was necessarily unjustified. i have not seen his medical record. i would have on our time saying that it was absolutely the wrong thing to give him medication, but nobody explained his medication to have. and they didn't explain the details like the fact that this was a temporary placement. so even though their past and psychiatrist and special

schools, they have all read the services. people were not related to him the way they should have been, and medication did field, to him, like a chemical straitjacket, like it was a punishment, something because he was a bad kid. >> the way he tells it is sounds like it to work. it sounds -- i mean, this was a child, traumatized from early age. at least in his telling of it it does not sound like he ever had anyone really deal with that trauma or try to help him therapeutically work through the actual trauma. >> the impression i got as well. like us said, he had therapist. does not sound like there were very effective. it sounds like there were trying to get him into certain categories. you have any problems or you have this or that. but not to look through the really difficult things that he had been through. in fact, things were so difficult and painful, that he still can't talk about them today and could not tell me all

the details. >> all of the different diagnoses. >> a different medications, i don't remember ever seeing him talk about ptsd or about attachment disorder. it seems that he went from trendy diagnosis, i hate talking that way, but that's what it sounds like how to turn the diagnosis and ended up -- it's almost as if you are creating a fictional composite character to embodied everything that has gone wrong in child psychiatry of the past couple of decades. it happened to him. he ends up with diabetes. he ends up overdosing on medication. he ends up interpreting the medication as being to control him and his behavior because he is bad and that's really the way it is presented to him. how did he turn that in the end? >> he has turned out remarkably well. he is a really impressive command. he is now married to a young woman who has a young child of her own.

he adores the child. he is going through school slowly because he has to work his way through school, but he has done an amazing job at forming partnerships with mentoring adults. at inky, after having a childhood where he really did not have adults looking out for him, or not adults that he could really rely on for long enough time for unconditional love, he has done a great show of seeking out mentors. and he also has sort of found religion. and, you know, we can be critical of that, but i think that it has really fill the void his life and has made him feel deeply loved and unconditionally loved it another way. >> it certainly seemed that way. did a couple finally adopted? >> no, he was never adopted. he does have extremely close relationships with a number of adults who are essentially

adopted parents. >> essentially he was blessed with great resilience with everything that he had gone through. >> remarkable resilience. >> the other story is very, very different. elizabeth, clear notably, very different. >> sure. there is an interesting example because she is the daughter of a mental health advocate. her father has schizophrenia and became and is quite a prominent advocate for people with schizophrenia and the argument that they can be very high functioning in the region well in society. so our parents were more on the lookout for problems than the average parent. even so, what was so interesting about her was that childhood, so rarely diagnosed in a very early 90's when she began to have problems that they just didn't know what to make of her melt down. it thought it was just to she was. and they more quickly recognized

it probably then the other parents would have, and they took her to a pediatrician who prescribe an antidepressant. but it was really striking to me that even they did not say, though, that is depression. because the concept of depression in that child was such a new concept and. >> in this sounds awful because the problems are very different. so you would not have necessarily recognize himself in right away. >> you know, you refer to clear as having become the poster child for use depression because she made a documentary, she starred a documentary basically that was shown at -- around the country talking about her strength which is a very, very helpful thing to do for a lot of other kids. i wondered, was the effect of that on our? that is a tough role to play. she did that area and in that she had to remain in that role for a long time afterwards. >> the interesting thing about it. even though she was the poster child, she did not have this miracle turnaround on medication

the way to a for siblings were close and a stir did also take anti-depressant and have great responses. they were not the poster children because they were not as inclined to play that role. very dynamic inarticulate. but medication had all kinds of side effects for her. and so at the same time that she was trying to explain depression and explain that it was a condition that could be treated well, she was also struggling to find a medication that did not maker too exhausted to function. too exhausted, you know, falling asleep in class. >> it probably would have been, i imagine, even more helpful if that part of the story had come too strongly as well. the relatively typical story, these medications to have very strong side effects. they don't work for everyone. they can work wonderfully for some people. it truly can be life changing and lifesaving for a lot of people, but for other people it

is really an odyssey that can go on basically all their life. >> absolutely, and that can be incredibly difficult for children to struggle with, but also just to conceptualize and understand. they're trying to understand the nature of a problem until the medication is supposed to help them and alleviate the symptoms and it doesn't do that, that can be really difficult, i think, for them to sustain the commitment to taking it and just to the really feel that it is worth it and to trust their parents and their doctors for years on and when the medications don't really do with their promise to do. >> an interesting example, elizabeth, maybe in some ways in some ways not the polar opposite. and that she was are privileged environment and yet she disconnected. privilege to when that sense she is the polar opposite, and yet she profoundly disconnected from appearance, profoundly

disconnected from each other, so they have that commonality. can you talk about her? >> elizabeth drew up in a wealthy suburb of washington d.c. her father was a very prominent lawyer. her mother was involved in local politics and that sort of thing. and they had very difficult relationships. her father had problems with alcoholism that caused problems in a marriage. she began to have a real dysfunction in mill school where she just was unable to a turn in homework and really depressed. ultimately diagnosed with both adt and depression and given to medications, which i think complicated matters because she had trouble selling which drug was doing what. >> one of them, as i recall, given a to a vote to -- given in a trivializing weight. >> exactly. really diagnose with depression. they said 80 stay depressed.

not doing well in school. almost fell out. and they just sort of threat at her. it was that which made it extremely difficult for tough the committed to the medication and to sort of bridge what it was doing. ultimately she ended up killing off of it without telling her doctor, i think, in part because she was not acclimated to it in the proper way. >> what happened that? >> it did not work out well. she started cutting herself, doing self injury. and she did not immediately make the connection between the fact that she got off for anti-depressant in the cabin, but she fell into a deep depression, and she went for a couple of years. took quite a while to realize that probably she was in the depressed, that this was not just teenage jinxed, that she was going to romanticized in

some way and this was something that kidney treatment after all and went back. >> i was struck by house supporter for friends or for. by the time she was in college there were really there for, pushing her to get treatment when she was cutting. >> yes. and i thought that was great. that was a function of her feeling comfortable telling her friends about her problems. many of the people i interviewed were not comfortable telling difference. if they did, it happened in a casual way. i myself mentioned to my friends that i take medication for anxiety and depression and will mention it, but i am not inclined to up what sub -- i don't want to burden them, and i think that is a common impulse. also, with teenagers and kids, it is difficult to find a vocabulary to explain these feelings and what you're going through and to explain that to your friends. >> it's interesting. people and parents don't have children with mental health issues tend to believe that the kids just talk about all the time and everyone is on medication and a joke about it

and give it to a man's. that is just completely normal. what's happening to our kids, but that's not really the truth, is it? >> i think their is a certain amount of joking in a really superficial way which does not help at all. and is certain it is not help the kids are actually startling. it actually makes them less likely to want to confine their peers because they see that they're not taking seriously. and with things like medication for a ph.d., i interviewed people who work a shame to the ticket. they felt that their peers were going to judge them, getting an unfair like upper something like that. >> were going to have to take a break in just a moment. i want to say, i'm thrilled with all of what you told me. fascinating. when we come back would like to talk a bit about the issue of the unreliable narrator when you are talking to young adults and teens and also talk more about what kind of conclusions we can draw from these stories. ..

>> it can be destabilizing to feel that if you don't have that all figured out and you have problems that the problems are very common. one of the most common scenarios where to show up is depression, which is in regards to this subject in the book. this kid was diagnosed with depression at age 12. he had a fabulous turnaround where his depression actually did not completely go away, but he had been so suicidal but then he felt as though he had been raised from the depths of hell. a few years later he began experiencing completely new symptoms that later turned out to be maniac and he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. it actually took quite a while for his doctors to figure out what was going on. they thought that he didn't need

his medication anymore. magically, he was undergoing some other hormonal shifts, like a second puberty. that was just one example of many different kinds of iterations of the changes that can take place when you are talking about a young person who is really growing and developing and changing. >> host: the turning point for him was on a bridge. contemplating suicide. and the police came and the firemen came and they saved him. at least he was found and he was treated. there is a problem about kids wanting treatment and not being able to get it or be noticed. not being able to be admitted to hospital women feel that they really need intensive treatment. because regulations have changed in such a way, insurance reimbursement has changed, so many fewer hospitals, can you talk about some of those? >> guest: sure, and that does happen. that happened specifically with one of the subjects in the book

named alice. he was going through much more severe symptoms that he had experienced when he started treatment for 10 years old. he was at a point where he felt possibly suicidal. and he wanted to be admitted to a hospital and he didn't have a specific plan to kill himself. they would not admit him. that is not an uncommon story. as i recall, in order to get him admitted eventually coming out the say he was suicidal and lie to get people to admit them. >> fortunately, none of these people ended up in the criminal justice system. which is a typical problem. it certainly is, you know, too little too late at that point.

the other thing that happened to him that i think is indicative of a larger systematic level is that is not long enough, four days to be admitted, to get a real sense as to whether a real medication is working. so he can tell certain antipsychotics right away. he was -- a few weeks later, he very narrowly tried to commit suicide. it is not uncommon for these things to read on trent result in a readmission.

>> host: some psychiatrists who are happily conducting these 15 minute chat sessions and not having the kind of continuous follow-up with their patients because it is a way to make money. it is a way to make a lot of money. did you find satisfaction with the way things are happening right now? there is no doubt that most of these kids that you are talking to or getting preemptory forms of treatment. how do the doctors, you know, dispensing medication feel about what they were doing? >> guest: well, i did make a point of talking to doctors who believed in a more joined kind of therapeutic approach. because they were the ones that were more sensitive to these questions of identity and how the medications were affecting them. they were the ones asking the questions with their young patients. certainly, that whole cadre of

-- they are not happy with the way things are. and they feel an enormous financial pressure from the insurance companies to conduct these 15 minute checks, that is the cliché. they were not happy with it all and some psychiatrists don't take insurance, actually. >> host: which is a whole another problem in america because it means you don't have a system where only certain people can get quality treatment. we see this so clearly with the foster child who gets really disjointed treatment. i have heard other stories of that type where a psychiatrist may be prescribing medication to a child whose full record is never actually seen. and they are kind of flying blind right on trent not by choice. >> guest: absolutely. the parents insurance may shift and they might see a new

provider and go from one person to another and another. >> host: i've noticed firsthand that you get the story first hand because of the type of people that you talk to. those who are thinking and talking and writing about this. you get their perspective in the first place. have you had that feeling of frustration. >> guest: i absolutely have had that feeling. i suspect that some of the less

productive interviews i conducted worked with some of the questions were not thinking but who wanted to rush and go through too many patients at once to have the time to reflect. the ones that i talked to in detail, yes, it was a great example. that concern me because i felt like i wanted to get the bigger picture. of child psychiatry in america. that would've been a different book. >> host: how did you get that data? that would give you a answers on the state of child psychiatry in america. you get little it's in pieces, but some don't pay insurance. >> guest: it's virtually impossible. >> host: discussions are taking place and you have to look at what you have. >> host: did you question yourself along the lines about how to work with material coming from

you were interviewing teenagers at the time. i realize that through everything, you don't have the full range of information in your early years. in some ways you don't ever get it. but you don't have the perceptive to fully understand what is happening and be able to put yourself in the shoes of the adult in your life. did you ever look at your story and the testimonials you were getting and wonder, was there another side to the story backward their pieces missing? did you talk to the parents along with the children? what was the basis remapped. >> guest: i did my best one ever occurred to talk to the parents along with the kids. and policies, and try to talk to a couple of caregivers to get the other side of the story. especially when we were talking about children, those who began treatment very young and

appearance instigated it, i wanted to know how and why did that happen. but certainly, you know ,-com,-com ma i felt very conflicted as i was writing about because i really wanted to build credence to what they were saying. i wanted to take this very seriously, and that was part of the notion of the book. but i also didn't want to present the information unquestioningly. they obtusely have their own biases. there were times when i felt like like i didn't necessarily doubt the facts of what they were saying, but i felt it could be interpreted in a different way. i think paul was one example where i can certainly imagine where his caregivers might have been at a loss as to what to do with him and medication would've been a reasonable option. >> host: yet in all of these cases, the knowledge that adults

have now and the ability they have to talk about experiences and conceptualize them, put them in a larger context -- they wanted so much and what they were given along the way. that adults empower them along the way? there were really vast differences in thinking. >> guest: there certainly were. claire was a good example. she was an example on one private spectrum of just getting -- just a really detailed information from her parents. about depression and the nature of it being a chronic illness. that might require treatment. indefinitely, even. some people might say that that is a really kind of negative take for a child. in her case, it sort of turned out to be realistic because medication did not work perfectly and she kept on having to try new ones.

there were other kids who just got extremely little information and what i conclude is the more information they can get from their parents and doctors, the better that they fared. >> host: the more connected they weren't to be adults in their lives, the better they fared, but this connection, a lot of these kids were really striking. how elizabeth and alex -- can you talk a little bit about them? >> guest: alex was born out of wedlock to a mother whose father was married to another woman and had another child. and he grew up sort of knowing his father but feeling very disconnected from him. he was very close to his mother, but when he was about nine or 10 years old, his mother started having a couple of series boyfriends who moved into the house. he ultimately -- one of them became his stepfather and he got along very poorly with them.

he got along very poorly with them. it could be argued that they were emotionally abusive. they try to separate him from his mother. i think he probably got less attention from his mother if she would've been able to fully devote herself to him like she had to choose somehow between him. >> host: also it seems very undermining of his treatment,'s effort to get treatment and stay in treatment and that he had this kind of view that being medicated -- finding the easy way out and we need to be more stoic and tougher that alex tried to identify without with that at a certain point in time and did identify, but it did not work for him. >> guest: his father -- stepfather had epilepsy and did not take medication. he had the module idea that you don't take medication for

problems and alex ultimately went off his medications in high school for several years with the commission permission of his doctor and hoping that he could talk about himself and it was really a blow to his self-esteem and his sense of self when he relapsed and begin experiencing much more severe symptoms that did require him to go back and return to medication. >> host: and that was related to some of the identity issues that you raised throughout the book. you talked about the role that medication plays in the formation of identity. you talked about having specific diagnosis and how it can give someone a sense of identity that can be too narrow. but if the diagnosis ships, the medication doesn't work -- it isn't just the suffering of whatever symptoms or the disappointment, but it's a whole sense that somehow gets to be involved. could you talk about this? in the case of some of these

other people? >> guest: i think that sometimes having a label could be very helpful for many of these young people. some who i interviewed a bit, his name is joe, for instance, felt very ashamed of being depressed, and once it had a name and he was given medication, he felt really validated. and he no longer felt like that was something that he needed to hide. or that he just needed to be ashamed of. i also have that feeling. i felt like medication was proof that there was something wrong with me. and that i deserved treatment. and i deserve something serious. on the other hand, with some of these shifting diagnoses, you think you have it figured out. and a lot of times you don't. and that is nobody's fault,

necessarily. the doctors are doing their best to come up with the proper diagnosis. but it is notoriously difficult to diagnose children, and they grow and they change and sometimes they develop what are called certain conditions that coexist with previous condition. that shows up later. in my case, anxiety have been a problem for me for a long time, but really became a problem, the dominant problem, later when i was in my 20s. this happened for claire, actually, who is also unprepared to deal with her inside me because she was so used to thinking of herself as having depression. >> person that is just plain opposed to medicating children under any circumstances is opposed to psychotropic medication, that we have become a pill for every ailment in society -- that whole kind of, you know, will they listen to you and say, if this kid hasn't

been medicated and the first place, maybe they would not have come up with all the problems later. maybe the medication change their brain and the depression became anxiety. maybe adhd turned into bipolar disorder. what with adjusted to them. how would you answer that? it's an important question because a lot of people think that. >> guest: there is, i have to say, some evidence, and there is some serious researcher who believes it is a possibility. it is not a completely wacky or insane thoughts. i think in most cases, it is probably not the case. i think that it is very common for there to be this where people develop multiple conditions. triggering new kinds of symptoms. however, i do discuss in the book the possibility that

antidepressants are known to trigger mania. and there is a line of research going on to discover whether that makes people who are prone to bipolar disorder to develop it at a younger age than they would have if they had never taken those medications. and it is an intriguing and haunting possibility. i don't think the findings are there to answer that question as of yet. but if it were true, it would be very upsetting. >> host: very upsetting and problematic. the fear of that drove a lot of doctors in the early two thousands to prescribe fewer stimulants, fewer antidepressants, and more atypical antipsychotics, which can be described in the book is for children with bipolar disorder, those who are not necessarily schizophrenic or psychotic in that sense.

these drugs have dangerous side effects. can you talk a little bit about these medications and how they came on the market and what the expectations were? and what the fallout has been? >> guest: sure. through the 80s and 90s, they were approved for schizophrenia in adults. then they were increasingly prescribed as a treatment of bipolar disorder in children. also to treat various kinds of aggressive behavior disorders in children as well. it didn't come out in studies until a few years after the millennium. but they could have very serious side effects including massive rapid weight gain and type two diabetes. >> which is what happened to paul after he had taken one of these atypical antipsychotics for a couple of years. nobody had warned him of that

possibility. were discussed other options for him. this concern about possible long-term side effects can be very problematic. for certain drugs like stimulants, or antidepressants, you can get a drug causes much more likely short-term and very serious side effects. >> host: it makes it such a difficult decision for parents who just want to help them and there is no science to guide them one way or the other. talk about that a little bit. why is there not more research focused on children. >> partly it has to do with ethical issues, about the controlled study randomly assigning children to treat children or giving them no treatment. part of this is a lack of long-term research and studies that would be tracking kits for

many years to see how the medications affect them over the course of their development. those studies are just enormously complicated. they require all kinds of follow-up and sort of the whole apparatus of tracking people down. they are very expensive, and they require a researcher to devote his or her career to this subject and not everybody is willing to do that. it is difficult to secure the funding for those kinds of studies. >> host: there is a study that was funded by the nimh that found some interesting results. some of them troubling and others suggesting ways that we could deliver better care in our society. at the same time, even those as well are hotly debated. each time a piece of it comes out, there is more debate. how do you cut through all that? is apparent cut through all that? >> it is such a difficult question. i think that parents should do their research as much as they can. but i think that really a key

thing is if they do decide to medicate their child, they shouldn't look at it as a decision that must go on forever. that they have decided to medicate her kid and there is no going back. it is important to have a continuing discussion with the doctor to get a second opinion and if you can have access to a therapist, talk to the therapist about the idea of medication. and also, very importantly, check in with the child to see how they feel about the treatment and to try to make them partners in the treatment as much as possible. because i think it is so important to take the children seriously and really check in with them, how the medications are affecting them. they are experiencing that every day. >> host: there are so many negative stories in this book.

short visits with psychiatrists, adults who generally just don't get it. when people do have positive experiences, what with the elements of those treatments? those experiences with relationships -- if parents are trying to get good care, where should they start and what should they you looking for? >> guest: i think the doctor who takes the child seriously and takes the parents views seriously is very key. you want to have a doctor who respects any doubts that the parents have and also any doubts that the child has and is able to explain to the child, the child is afraid that the medication will make them crazy or change their whole personality. fears that children do have. or even if they are a little older and they are thinking that this is going to make me a less fun person.

the doctor needs to take those concerns seriously and explain him and how the medications work, also to be honest about the fact that the doctor -- doctors don't know exactly how the medications work and it is a process of trial and error. i think that looking for a doctor that doesn't pretend to be all knowing and doesn't pretend that they have necessarily all the solution to work with the family and child -- it's so important. >> host: do doctors in the positive experiences you have had, do they tend to be pediatricians or psychiatrists? >> guest: it is pretty hard to get access to a psychiatrist for a child. a very well could be pediatricians. and there are enormous pressures on pediatricians to have these very short visits. where is they don't have the time, really, to accurately diagnose the child were to follow up with the medication.

but if they can do a little looking into little reading around fort be pediatricians may be doesn't have the ability to be reimbursed by the insurance company. >> host: it is very difficult and time-consuming. certainly they are under pressures, to. we are starting to wrap up and i want to ask you. you talk about the legacies of medication. what are the legacies of medication for yourself or some of these former young adults were you interviewed and for us as a society? >> guest: i think for both myself and many of the young people that i interviewed, it may determine what your problems are and what your capabilities

are. medication really adds an extra layer of complexity as we discussed in so many different areas. and it makes it show who you are in the adult identity. a more thorough process. more of an ongoing process, perhaps, as we continue into the 20s and 30s to try to experiment and find a medication that really works for you. i think as a society, the legacy is that we need to take children's opinions about their medication more seriously and not just -- i'm not saying that just saying that withdrawing medications at kids, but i think that in so far as we give them medications, we need to understand that they have opinions about the medication and they experience things that in many ways, more the way adults do, and it can be termite and scary, but the explanation is needed and guidance along the

way. and i hope this sort of next generation of kids that are going up now and are medicated, and also for the kids that people in my generation will have, that they will be able to benefit from a little bit more of a good way that medication can affect them postmarked it is an argument for what care is delivered in a more thoughtful way. is that right? >> guest: that is right. >> host: do you think that american kids are being overmedicated. >> guest: i think that question is impossible to answer. because it would require assessing every case. it would require singing and chanting how many kids should be medicated. and i don't know how any of us can say what the proper number of children to be medicated with me. how many hundreds of thousands or how many million kids would be the right number. i just hope that in so far as

kids are getting this care that it is done in a sensitive way and in a way that is productive and helpful for their long-term development is possible. >> host: are there any problems with stimulants, perhaps abuse, it gets attention from the media and it doesn't necessarily help in the way that kids may be prescribed in them and trent medication. it does point to the pressures that are bearing down on kids. the kids. they feel like they have to be superhuman. to what extent content extent do you think we can invite society, should we be inviting society? should be having more biological view? when you think about that? >> guest: i think many children have problems and the problems

weren't recognized her portrait we do live in a much more high-pressure society where we don't tolerate little blips were failures. and that i don't want to say that people are quick to medicate exactly, but they kind of freaked out if there's a little problem. and that children who are underpaid amounts of pressure, they probably will not come in the next couple of generations. >> host: you don't have children now, but you probably will someday. what would you do if you had a child that starts showing signs of anxiety and depression? which are medically? >> guest: i wouldn't medicate immediately, but i wouldn't waste a lot of time. there's only there is only so much time you have. if i were seeing months -- a number of months where they were really unhappy, i would medicate

them. >> host: that his advice he would give to other parents as well? >> guest: yes, that would be to take home. but if the child is not functioning the way he or she should be, don't let them go on that way indefinitely. >> host: kaitlin bell barnett, it has been fascinating. the book has been great. it should be a must-read for everyone. everyone is so caught up in this debate. you have eight good light and you shine a fresh perspective. the book is "dosed: the medication generation grows up." thank you so much. >> guest: thank you so much. >> from the american museum of natural history in new york city, neil degrasse tyson talks about the history and future of nasa and the u.s. space program. he argues that the exploration of space benefits americans more than they might think. it is a little over two hours.

>> good evening, everyone, and welcome. thank you for your patience. my name is suzanne morris and i am the senior editor of public programs here at the museum. we are thrilled to have you all here tonight. give yourselves a round of applause. [applause] the american museum of natural history has been home to some of the country's greatest thinkers. scientists and citizens who have changed the way we understand scientific and natural phenomenons and have brought that understanding to the national consciousness. from theodore roosevelt, who generated american conservation and preservation practices, to change the way we view and value of other cultures. neil degrasse tyson brings his unique perspective and personality to help us understand the beauty and the importance of space science and exploration.

a director of the hayden planetarium, born and raised in new york city, doctor tyson attended the school of science and earned his ba in physics from harvard, and then his phd in astrophysics from colombia. that is right. he has been an adviser to nasa and three presidents on matters related to space exploration. and he has been awarded steen honorary doctorates. he even has an asteroid named after him. widely known as a friend me of pluto, he joins us tonight to discuss his latest book, space chronicles, facing the ultimate frontier. please join me now in giving a warm welcome to doctor neil degrasse tyson. [applause] [cheers]

[applause] >> thank you. thank you for the warm introduction. just so you know, this is the only public talk anywhere that i'm giving on this book. this is the only talk i'm giving. you're not missing it somewhere else. [applause] i see you are ready up here. here we go. i will tell you how it all began. there was a big bang -- [laughter] in the 1990s, i was approached

by columbia university press write a chapter and an encyclopedia they were preparing to celebrate the end of the 20th century. it was called quite simply the columbia history of the 20th century. and i might even have it here. what is significant about it is that the person originally scheduled to write that, approached in 1996, the person originally scheduled to ride that was carl sagan. he had been asked to contribute a chapter on cosmic discovery to that volume. he died in 1996. my name was put up as one who

would then write in his stead. that is pretty much what i could pump out in the month. this chapter was asked to be 10,000 words. so i was almost declining. then i said no, maybe i can do something different, little a little bit more creative. and i thought, okay, why not think of discovery, not in the 20th century, not even in terms of a discovery of objects and places, but the discovery of ideas. and i would track the transition from the discovery of places going up to the errol of the

great explorers once you have mapped the whole earth, what is left there for you to discover. philosophically, what is left once you know that the whole earth is there. then you have new ideas and they take you to space. and i thought to myself at the time, you know, i really want to go to mars. with people. it is an uncommon vi among my colleagues, my astrophysics colleagues, by and large, maybe three to one ratio. sending humans into space. that sentiment is held by an entire generation of my colleagues who grew up in the 1960s wanted to become a scientist because of the manned program. so there is little that hypocrisy there. not only that, in my judgment,

politically it is naïve to think. to think that nasa is simply your private science funding agency. more on that later. so i said to myself, how much would it cost to go to nasa. let's say that it cost me go to mars. let's say it costs a half billion. let's say it costs a half trillion dollars. or even 1 trillion. that is expensive. that's a lot of money. actually, it's a small percentage of our budget spread out over many years. nonetheless, it is a lot of money. what it says i will go back to the history of time and ask of the greatest projects ever undertaken by human beings, what did you do to compel your

community to invest in this way. and i would make a whole chapter, maybe even push it out into a book of all the things that drove humans to do great things and i would look at the mission to mars and i would line up in the matrix and say, okay, mars is this% of our gdp. who else spent that% of their gdp and what do they do about it? i thought i would fill a whole book. in my analysis, contained in this chapter, the one chapter in here, the chapter called house to discovery. by the way, don't tell columbia crest is, but you don't have to buy this book because that chapter was accepted for the space chronicles book. [laughter] i brought this just for historical continuity so you can know what is behind all this and how it all began. i made a list of the most expensive things we have done as a species.

we agreed with most of what appears on this list. there is the great wall of china. expensive in terms of human or financial terms. the apollo project, the manhattan project, the cathedral building, the columbus voyages, very expensive. to queen isabella and king ferdinand, the magellan voyages. the whole episode of those wages. the pyramids. let's make our list. any gripe about the list that i just cost of their? sure, we would all agree. major investments in human and financial capital. then i asked, what was the motivation for those? >> in my list of the most expensive things we have ever done, i came up with only three drivers. no more than three, no fewer

than three. the number one driver of the mall is war. were you can call it defends. that gives you the great wall of china. that gives you the manhattan project. in fact, that also gives you the apollo project. the i don't want to die driver. if you feel threatened and are at risk, you will spend money without limit to not die. [laughter] okay or if that's kind of an obvious one in retrospect. what is next? the prospect of gaining great economic wealth. not quite as potent as the i don't want to die driver, but it is really powerful operating on the motivations of nations. that is what gives you the columbus voyages. columbus himself was a discover. but somebody has to write the check. the people who wrote the check

says oh, by the way, take these spanish flags with you when you go and put them wherever you land to clear the land for spain, see if there are any bridges there. he didn't say tell us what new things you learned about the botany of where you landed. no, he might be interested in it, his crew might be interested in it, but not the people who wrote the checks. the third greatest driver, we see much less of this today, than what was common hundreds of years ago. that is the praise of royalty or deity. this is the effort to appease an entity that is either perceived to be were literally is more powerful than you are. that is how you get the pyramids. that is how you get the cathedral building. today you don't have kings and

gods motivating major fund a project of nations. but there is a day when we did. okay. so i said to myself, if we are going to go to mars, and mars is expensive, it is going to have to satisfy one of those two criteria is. otherwise, we are just never going to mars. that is the revelation and centerpiece of the chapter. all the rest of what went on orbits that revelation in that chapter. i said to myself, i wonder how many people know this. because i do hang around space enthusiasts and what they tell me? they say the reason that we stopped going to the moon is we didn't have leaders. we needed visionaries. we stopped being risk takers. there is a whole list of arguments that people will give you for why we are not in space. why we are not -- why the space

frontier has not continued beyond humans landing on the moon. there's a whole list. i deduced that every -- without exception -- every item on this list was delusional. it doesn't include other things. we need to explore space and science because it's in our dna and because we are americans and americans are explorers. all these reasons are given. history tells me that none of those reasons matter. to those who are writing the checks. that is the difference. i thought, well, i have to tell people this, because if we're going to go to mars, then we have to motivate people in a way

that is either militaristic we driven, but nobody really wants that to be the reason, or economically driven. so i started exploring in what way a presence in space can satisfy one or the other or both of those criteria. i was even invited after that article was published to a space development conference in washington. a position between buzz aldrin and, forgive me, i forgot his name, the guy who wrote october sky. homer hit him. these are important folks. one of them had actually been on the moon and the other one was inspired. there is a lot of inspiration talk in front of me and behind me. i said that any ambitions in

space, if you expect them to be driven just by the will to want to go or the longing for a charismatic leader, you are deluded. i said it right to buzz aldrin space. i just said, i think you might be a little misdirected in your thinking. that is the polite way to say that you are clueless about what is driving human motivation here. so, okay, a couple of years would go will go by and i would get a phone call. the white house. this is april 2001. the white house. it is the george w. bush white house. they say oh, we want to check your interest to see if he would

serve on the presidential commission. i said a commission on what? i don't even know what commissioners. first of all, i am an academic. i don't hang out in washington. i don't know anything about washington. in academia, politics is the barrier between where you're standing and where you want to go. where is in washington, politics is the common a sea of all interactions. so this is not my culture. they want to come to washington to serve in the commission. i said, what's the title of the commission? they said the commission on the future of the united states aerospace industry. and i said, you have the right thyssen? you know, i fly in airplanes, i don't fly airplanes, but then they said no, we know who you are and be read your writings, and i said could they have read -- what? how?

so the redmond a list of other people there, buzz aldrin was going to be on that as well just in case you don't remember, he was an apollo 11 astronaut. the second person to walk on the moon of the first mission to the lunar surface. so there are 12 commissioners appointed to this. i'm from new york city, born and raised. in your commute go all day without ever seeing a republican. okay? [laughter] in my line? [laughter] so i'm getting called by the republican president and i am an

academic, and george bush at deal jail did not do well in his astronomy class. and he was still counting in florida, and he said, well, we have to ask you a few questions. and out came a series of questions. all of the questions that were illegal on a job application i got asked. because it is not -- it's an appointment, not a job. so the rules don't apply. what is your sexual preference or your religion? have you ever protested, have you ever been arrested for anything? have you ever protested and almost got arrested? it was this whole long series of questions. then, because i answered a question, bennett said, are you familiar with the presence politics and policies? and i said, yes, from what i've

read in the paper, you know, i'm not a politician. and they said, what do you think of that? [laughter] so i said hello and i enter this? will probably was only 10 seconds felt like it was many minutes. before i fettered my reply. at the time, george bush was appointing members of his cabinet. something looked quite promising at the time. colin powell was just announced as one of his chief advisers and condoleezza rice was a provost at stanford. so these are educated people. people smarter than he is. okay, there's hope there, i thought to myself. so i said, because what i really wanted to do was reach through

the phone -- [laughter] the chads and the districts -- i said that would not be productive. they are trying to do good here. again to my composure, and like i said, probably only 10 seconds, although it felt like minutes, i said i applaud the president's efforts to surround himself with talented people so that he can make the best decisions that he can in the interest of this nation. [applause] that was a thursday. by monday i was appointed to a presidential commission to study the future of the united states aerospace industry. i would learn that i was the lone academic on this commission. i would learn that coming from my left posture, having been

born and raised in new york, coming from a liberal family, i would learn that in order to have a conversation with those who are not, you cannot stand her and have that conversation. it doesn't work. there is actually a smokescreen there. on the far right, there is a smokescreen there too. you can't have that conversation. this is what the tv news talk shows do. they get people with hot air on both ends, and at the end, there is just more hot air. you actually have to crawl out of the zone's and stand in the middle and have that conversation. over the. of that commission, that is what i did. upon doing so, i would learn things about the far right. things i would not have known or even understood. in so, in fact, it was quite illuminating to me to have this

experience. i will give you an example of the liberal smokescreen by us. because it is hard to see them when you are there. you have to step out and look back. here is a bleeding liberal, a bleeding heart liberal bias. because nobody in new york like president bush, right? so i was appointed to the bush commission. and they said oh, they pointed you because you are black. [laughter] okay. actually, there is another black person on the commission. the four-star air force general. so the argument that operate immediately. there is no argument. okay? there were two women on the panel. one of them was an aerospace analyst and another a former member of congress who had air force bases in her district in

florida. other people there, there is lockheed martin, the head of aerospace and buzz aldrin who had been on the moon. if we go around introducing ourselves, it is tough to follow buzz aldrin. well, i've been on the moon, okay. we are done. i got nothing on that. okay? [laughter] you know, what was in that meeting, what i noticed is that everybody there reached of testosterone. because they were captains of industry, heads of agency. former security advisers. even the women had testosterone. like i said, the securities analysts for wall street, anything she would say or write about the company would affect the stock price. they treated her kindly. why am i even taking you down

this road? understrength share with you my baptism into this world of aerospace. and also nasa and what i have done about it since then. all right, that commission was formed because -- oh, back up one moment. twelve members of the commission. it is a white house commission, but the rules are that six members are appointed by congress. six members are appointed by the white house. of the six members appointed by congress, there is a mix that reflected the partisan split in congress at the time. they are trying to be politically fair is a construct this, the white house appoints six people. bush would've appointed six republicans, but he didn't. i am not a republican. that is one of the questions that they asked me. what is your political

affiliation. those are going to ask what religion i am and what my sexual preferences -- so i said i'm a registered democrat. so that was known to them. i was numb less higher. the talk that bush may never hire me. that was false. it was part of the smokescreen that is at the limits of each of the political spectrum. so in the previous 15 years, the aerospace industry have lost a half million jobs. there have been huge consolidation from dozens and dozens of companies down to just four or five. lockheed martin -- where did that come from? these companies started started collapsing down to just a few. congress was worried what effect this would have on the aerospace industry of the nation. because aerospace is responsible for military, airborne security,

it is responsible for transportation, for commerce, they recognize a fundamental part of what it is to live in america in the 21st century. they want to get to the bottom of it. many of the aerospace companies, they not only make the airplanes, but the spacious. and so we have aero people and space people on the commission. i was counted as one of the space people. one of the trips we took was around the world. this is 2002. around the world to key places that have burgeoning aerospace industries to find out there is some competition that were not living up to -- were they doing we are not doing it, i went to beijing in 2002. my first time there, i went there with a complete portfolio stereotype about what i would expect. boulevards and bicycles. all right? this is what i expected.

arriving in beijing, yeah, there are bicycles, but that's not what is filling the boulevard. there are mercedes and volkswagen's and bmws. it's not like anything i had ever seen. heads of agency there. i look carefully and i see on their hand, college rings, graduate degrees from american universities and engineering. almost every one of the leaders that were shaping the future culture, future industrial culture of china were trained and educated here in america in engineering schools. we took an excursion to the great wall of china. i had never been there.

right? i'm on the great wall. and then it disappears in the mist, right? you can't see the end of it. there it is. i look in every direction and there are only bricks that made the wall. okay? by the way, do you know what the distances between? there is a reason for the distance. it was set tween where the tourists are. it had to do with the precision with which an archer can kill you. at a distance. so the carrots or twice that distance. anyone climbing over it, they can take you out. the military project, as we have our degree. not only that, it turns in a particular way so that if you are right-handed, the site where you are carrying the vote doesn't rub up against someone

else in the other direction. military thinking. anyhow, it has nothing to do with anyone on the side. i am on the great wall of china and i don't see any technology anywhere. this is out in the middle of the boonies. oh, by the way, there were chinese peasants that common from, i guess they were peasants, because they were not very well dressed -- but this was nonetheless a tourist trip for them. none of them were looking at the wall. they wanted to photograph themselves next to me. [laughter] apparently i was more interested than the wall. the only black person they have ever seen in their lives. [laughter] so i said i'm just going to try something. i went to undermine and said, can i borrow your cell phone for a minute. they had a gsi enabled cell phone. i called my parents in

westchester, new york. i dialed the number and my mother answers and i say mom, she said oh, your home so soon. that's how good that connection was. i said i'm on the great wall of china. there are no antennas anywhere. i don't see any electricity. i don't see anything. and i'm having a conversation with my mother, and she thinks i am back at home. there was nobody in china saying, can you hear me now? can you hear me now? something was underfoot in china. ..

the. >> i want to make sure we have time progression and answer. revisited france. e. england, we have a common

language with them we are told. [laughter] we visited all the countries but here is russia, i do not even know the alphabet. i recognize a couple but when we start to talk about space, there was a bond that i did not share with any other community around the world. even though sworn enemies during the cold war, we alone embarked on that grandest of the venture's. to explore space. it was a camaraderie, a kinship. i felt it. it was the. it was in the culture, the timbre of our interactions.

i'll never forget the feeling i had been in their presence. and the trinkets. one of my most cherished items are a set of goals with the sequence of heads of state to or people you don't recognize. hot this sets had rationed spacecraft. the biggest of which it -- the international space station. the littlest one was sputnik. it is so q. [laughter] somebody said i am tired of looking at mchale gorbachev's of base on the dollar.

give me the front year. in brussels we need their representatives because they explore space together to embark on space and ventures together. wrote we were perfecting our gps. yes, it was military funded come of the once it became part of our commerce, then the ownership shifted from the military to the public. the plant is are you equipped with gps receivers to fly around the world. europe was planning a competing system called galileo. extremely expensive.

we were part of the aerospace -- aerospace commission. we said you can use the gps. they said no. we were afraid that we would then have to equip all aircraft with galileo that would be expensive. we were sitting in a room we were saying we want you to use this. they would do it on their own. we were almost a big gain because we had economic issues to protect. ms. sky9 was smug his chair may have been a little higher than mine. and then i had an epiphany. i said to myself, i am gingrey. i am pissed off.

not because he is smug but here is an industry, and enterprise that we pioneered and resetting added table bargaining as though it is soybeans. as if it is a bit of trade regulation in. idle have experience with this state of mind certainly not with regards to technology. we group in a time when america led the world in technology. when you leave it you never find yourself at a bargaining table, begging. you are so far ahead they don't know how to set the table with you. for me to bear witness to

this exchange, i was angry at america because we have lost our way. we were coasting on the investments of a previous generation. coasting. then you slowdown. then stop. you can coast for a while and you think everything is going well because there is still time delay of the ovations and when they are revealed economically later. if i was a great. then i come back to america to share ideas everybody talks about the saturn five. don't get me wrong i even have the saturn five tie. i wore a different one day.

[laughter] six if you like my tie. that is fine. [laughter] i have about 100. any time people talk about space, there would reference the golden era. i have no problem with that except another revelation came upon me. have you ever see the saturn five up close? >> one it is in alabama where it was invented. they have two of them. one is standing vertically one is in captivity in a museum space where each segment is an actual rocket to part and would add of loan if it went beyond apollo 17.

you have the rocket separate is a you can observe. one of florida, one in houston. a total of four. you visit these rockets and you cannot believe it. one of the engine nozzles at the base big enough to have a tea party for five. in a single bozell the length of it is 32 stories tall. then a tiny capsule at the top with the three astronauts. this is the rocket equations and manifestation manifest that tells you for every little bit of payload -- payload you need that much more fuel to

launch the fuel that you have not burned yet. of that rapidly runs away from you and the spaceship has to get exponentially large due to the payload. that is why it is 31 stories of fuel and four stories of master not and lunar lander. here we reflect in front of the piece of hardware. look how we did it. revelation number four. why am i reflecting in front of the saturn five rocket? >> it is the first to leave lower or bit and go someplace. we did it eight times. apollo 10 went to the moon.

but i would say houston, i cannot hear you. [laughter] you are breaking up. i have got to land. [laughter] and where was i before i interrupted myself? [laughter] i was reflecting over the saturn five reflecting. is there any piece of technology used in the the we can look of the first version wondering how they did it to? the first cellphone.

[laughter] you say look at that. i wonder how they did that. the first television is a circle of this big. the first computer half the size of this room. what it in a museum but i don't want to do that, at every form of technology the first version looks and but yet we still chairs the saturn five rocket that is 40 years old. 45 years old. i knew something else was wrong with america. if you praise something nothing comes after it. more evidence restocked dreaming and exploring. what happens? the apollo era ends.

apollo 17. but in science would have mattered group would have put to the rich harrison schmitt, jack schmidt, the last mission to the moon. do not kid ourselves. kennedy's speech may 25, 1961, six least -- six weeks after going into orbit incoming back safely we did not have a aircraft yet to bring them back safely but john f. kennedy stands up and utters the prophetic words will put a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. we collectively but from the

cleansing we think of him as a visionary. a charismatic leader who dreams of space like the rest of us. some of that rhetoric around that part of the speech, he talks about exploring space and the effect of mankind. it was okay to save mankind. what does he say? how about that? in florida kennedy space center there is a bust of him at the front entrance. a cold granite wall and the excerpt of the speech.

>> two paragraphs earlier if the events of recent weeks but if i will remind the men everywhere be much of the path of freedom over the path of tyranny. it was a battle cry against communism. that is the war driver that led to the check writing that created the nasa centers. why isn't that part of the speech on the granite wall? there is plenty of room. i checked. [laughter] you could even summarize to say kill the commies. go to the moon. [laughter] it would fit just fine.

[applause] that is part of the delusional thinking that goes on. when we stopped going to the moon, upon learning essentially you russia will not get there. as. by the way they beat us in practically every chief and until then. the first first human, the first woman, the first black%, the first space docking, space station. go down the list. how else to remember ourselves? space pioneers? no. practically every decision we made regarding space was in reaction or irked we did

not leave those achievements. we trailed them. another delusional point*. said now we stopped going to the moon. the space enthusiast says we just need another leader because mars is in reach. go to mars. no. there is no reason. because russia is not going to mars. the whole program ends. it just ends. people are looking for things to blame other than the fact the soviet union did not commit to the moon. it is that simple. really. i promise. go forward a little further.

1989, july 20th, the steps of the museum in washington d.c.. george herbert walker bush, the president coming uses this auspicious moment to stand on the steps of one of the greatest museums of earth and national air and space museum. he says we will build a space station, a colony on the moon and then go to mars. he wanted to give a kennedy's speech. was in a war driver? no. he just took apart the glowing rhetoric and referenced columbus and discovery is in our genes and went down the path.

it will take 30 years but let's do this. then some hammered out the plan. half a trillion dollars. doj and congress. we did not do it. then they said they did not have the charisma of kennedy. he had the auspicious occasion but not the charisma. it has nothing to do with charisma. [laughter] what happened in 1989? peace broke out in europe. that is what happened in 1989. you what half a trillion dollar project and you are not even at war? who were you kidding? he was missing, not kennedy's charisma but that

would interfere with anybody 118 but natalee that his incredulous $17 billion per year per couple to apply that by 30 years. you have half a trillion dollars. that was already flowing into nasa up. to say we cannot afford it company that is a live. that is how much you'll get to in their years any way. the original title of the book was bill year to launch, the dreams and illusions of space enthusiasts.

i said that is too depressing. we cannot have failure in the title. that would be bad. [laughter] let me try to wrap up because i am just ranting right now. i will be bleeding from is it i keep this up. [applause] don't get me started a in the decade of the '60s arguably the most turbulent decade in american history since the civil war there is a cold war, a hot for losing 100 men per week. southeast asia and vietnam of course. assassinations, a civil-rights movement unfolding weekly on the

news. protest. campus unrest. the one negative inane peak in. the end of 1968 apollo eight, the first to the floor earth orbit doing a figure eight to. around the backside of the moon and ask cannot pick up the camera to see the beautiful lunar landscape. and held it up to take a photo as never before seen by human eyes. that is one of the most recognized pitchers there ever was. earth rise.

i have a great with the title of course, . [laughter] relative to earth the moon does not rotate. which means earth is always in the sky is not rise it is never there or always there. [laughter] believes the people to think there earth rises on the moon like it does on earth. they're moving around the moon. then stuff comes up that is supposed to. what else happened in 1960's? people dream about tomorrow. if you go one week at most talk about the home of tomorrow, to his position of

tomorrow, we never got to flying cars. i am still angry about that. but we were imagining a tomorrow. who put it in april that? but scientists and technologists to and engineers. enablers of tomorrow's dreams. we had the innovation decade. what do you think the world's fair was all about? tomorrow. 1964. we're on our way to the moon. one pipeline but the this year, not just a global of the year if has three rings around it. where did they days they get that idea?

the three or bit around the world? space was inspiring a nation to dream about tomorrow. inspiring innovation. steve jobs and bill gates were 14 and 13. when we landed on the moon. with those motives the return. >> i am not talking about. >> there are some great ones along with the capacity to perform lays six research at -- surgery it predates nasa but it was expensive

and did not always work. the algorithms and the laser guidance enabled the space shuttle to dock with the space station accurately without bumping and trying four times, how many people have had a sixth surgery? it of one person in the whole place? [laughter] in-house and she is not wearing glasses. of course, the beverage of choice tang predates nassau. [laughter] i do not know why to this day prefer doha if your into spinoffs, every couple years nasa comes off with a space probe is beautifully

composed and written. there is one that allows deaf people to here. even good groove pavement. nasa figured out that is a good thing to do. why didn't anybody else? they were not motivated to do so. is somebody said i don't want the shuttle skipping down the runway it does not have propulsion on the runway. you want the stuff to stay straight they care about the shuttle going into space that is the important fact

pro but then the paragraph carefully composed talking about showing up in your room at night and removing everything that was inspired directly or interact asian directly by space technology. you would wake up. in a deep state of poverty poverty, technological poverty and then you would get rained on without the accurate weather forecast for i claim this is not even the best reason to do it. dare i say science has never caused government to spend huge sums of money. there is a radar level so he can kiss the boundary. we can do that. above that and determining the wealth of the nation

nation, above that level? it takes multiple years to fund and the czech rating agencies -- check writing agencies the interest pass to survive changes the political leadership and fluctuations in the economy. that is why i say let's go there is science park with the downturn the press goes to the unemployment line i cannot feed my family and then the reporter says we're going tomorrow. it does not play well. that is why it only two drivers work. the i don't want to drive driver. and the i don't to dry, poor driver