citizens of the united states. he credited churchill with influencing his ideas on foreign policy and the way he talked with the russian counter parts in years to come. then, a few years later, he see the influence of church hill's words and example on ronald reagan and margaret thatcher and the way they mute the special relationship forward. even gorbachev acknowledged the role of the speech in finding a way forward without resulting to directive war. what can it teach us here in the room? the soviet union is in war? in this age we have turned cynical toward the politician. we too often dismiss a speaker on either side as pulling something over on one of us. somebody who has a lot of say

but not a lot to do. but i think the right speech, delivered by the right speaker, at the right time has the power with bringing the nation in to a being. as with the decoration of independents. he has the power to -- he warned hit hitler we shall never surrender. it has the power to aspire our enemies to change. ronald region speaking in berlin to tear down the wall to gorbachev, the berlin wall, the churchill spoken of in missouri on that day. neither we nor our leaders should forget the impact. we also live in a time where politicians are dependent on --

constantly adjust their opinions. in contrast, churchill demonstrated that to truly lead you have to be willing to speak hard truths even when you know they will make you unpopular. and then when you are criticized, as we saw from his staunch defense of his words at the waldorf hotel you must be willing to stand your ground and not retract and not let your focus group tell you 0 to retract. politicians should be able to remind us as who we are as a nation, what with believe and why. the relationship between churchill and harry truman also hold valuable and timeless lessons for huhs us now. churchill was a conservative and truman a liberal. they put the nation above their

ideological values. it offers a lesson to the officials today. we can look to history to see what a true alliance and genuine bipartisanship truly look like. churchill and truman showed the that when it comes to writing the ills of the world, the bilge problems, the towing parties license pointing finger for finger pointing sake and up and pandering to your party's base should become irrelevant. such things then are not much as they are now. the distractions from the supreme task we face as a society we are crying out to the kind of brave, principles and collaborative leadership modeled bihar i are truman and churchill in missouri in 1946. indeed today we face threats to the way of life with terrorism

and rogue states like iran, north korea, and syria. some of which are attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. much as russia was when churchill spoke. it off seems there are two ways only strength is a preemptive strike and weakness is mere talking. in my book, i explain that churchill officers us cause. as he said in the speech, we must always pursue diplomacy to the end. and a willingness to standby our allies in good times and in bad. as churchill said, we must never seize to proclaim the great principles of freedom and the joint inheritance of the english-speaking world. what can we learn from the college president who had the ambitious plan brought him to

fullton in the first place against all odds? i think we have a goal in mind, an idea, an inspiration we should pursue no matter how unrealistic may seem at the time. it we commit that each of us want, then perhaps we too can leave a lasting mark on the world as did winston churchill on the fated full day in march of 1946. thank you. [applause] [applause] we'll take some questions. i think we have time for a happy

few. yeah? [inaudible] >> could we use a microphone. we are on c-span. >> they're going to bring a microphone up there. we have a microphone right here. okay. [inaudible] >> yeah. >> extremely impressive presentation. >> thank you. >> churchill has been a hero of mine since i was a child, and i've been much aware of the fact that he had problems with stuttering, and you mentioned just delivery. can you comment on speech impediment and how that affected his incredible delivery of all speeches? >> yes, certainly. i think that he actually came to use it as a distinguishing mark, for example, his unique pronunciation of nazi. it was something that once he became aware of it and the fact

that nothing was going to change it, he didn't see it as a handicap, and in fact, often wrote stage directions on to the small note card he paul's hair. i think it was probably the dramatic pause that all great actors use. but also perhaps to let him gather himself after each meaningful statement. >> thank you. >> yes? >> right here. >> we are grateful -- [inaudible] for writing the book especially those who attended west minister. i enrolled there in 19 -- 1954, eight years after the speech. my aunt made the cakes for winston churchill. and my family is from callway

county. my ancestors. we're proud of the town. i urge everyone, that hasn't been there, to drop by on their way to st. louis. it's seven miles off of by kingdom city. when i was at west minister, there was a fellow i hadn't melt before. we met on the same basket ball court. his name was chuck. chuck and i almost came to blows at that time, but then after that, we got along fine. i wonder whatever happened to him. [laughter] >> another question back here. >> yeah? as for the sinew of peace speech, i have understood that the phrase "iron -- [inaudible]

" was no the the written written text was purely ocean temp rain use at the time. yes, the there were several version of the speech that are held by the churchill arkansas archives. he marked up in the margins several minutes beforehand a few additional comment should be said. yes, the fact of that was not in the press version, one of the reasons why it was widely reported by the press, they hadn't been expected it. and also some of the copies the prez with them, the official title of sinews of peace was not on that. it got long forgotten when it got compared to the sound byte of the speech. your observation is correct.

>> [inaudible] being there i heard this speech. [applause] [applause] he was i heard from keeping your attention and just being -- [inaudible] on what he said. it and it sounded so natural, the flow of his word. but i learned fifteen years later in visiting his home south of lip ton about fifteen miles, a guide explained to me that in preparing for a speech, churchill has his own studio next to the bedroom, he has a podium, he writes it out, and practices his speech for up to two hours until he has it down. so when you hear him, it sound

so naturally. he's prepared. thank you. [applause] >> hello. do you feel like there would probably have been a rhetorical gap, that we really needed at that time as a unifying factor in the west? if this speech had not been delivered or if winston church hill or someone like that would not have come forward and delivered that? what are your thoughts on that? >> yes, i do believe that. as i mention the veteran diplomat george con nonwho had been in russia for many years had prefer faced this speech in

some ways. that helped truman and his top advisers to becomes you'd to churchill's message and maybe have a preview of it you could say before they read the draft. and i think while cannon was considered the expert and had written this fifteen-page memo. george cannon did not consider himself a good speaker. he would not have been the man who wanted to. and that's true. he would be fire if he didn't do. and was in moscow. would have been vulnerable to subversive activity if he had. while there were others who shared church him's beliefs about the division and [inaudible] defeat democracy and communism, which is laid out in the communist manifest tow as well. it was only winston churchill that could vocalize it in the particularly artful way.

while hoe didn't invent the term, it was from the theater, it was a fire preventive. it's possible that schunch -- churchill heard the term when the propaganda minister had used it in a statement to the press near the end of the war. it was churchill who was mobilizing the term and the special relationship and, i think that his standing, even though it was not prime minister, his worldwide recognition and the fact he was known as a great guy combined with the factsd that churchill planned all along truman invited him to not just america but a wonderful college in my home state give it to stuff that was needed to get the message out to the world. yes, i think it would have left a void. i'm not sure or what message would have indeeded filled that. >> [inaudible]

[applause] [applause] not want to prime time, booktv "in depth" interview he talksho aboutw the area of prohibition s well as the presidential election of 1948. >> a week before the convention, there'sfo a crazy quilt coalitin of democrats, southernsohe segregationist, are strom or jake of chicago liberals likess hubert humphrey.ey members of the rooseveltls like family.ooseve we want ike.l sd ike draws back again.bi.

crashes the whole thing. there's another explanation of why truman is able to pull this off even though people are so weary of him. and i can't repeat his exact evn words, but he -- when he hearis the words of the truman or the eisenhower collapses before the convention, you tell those people that any [black] who sits behind the desk get res nominated. it's hard to dump a city president in the nominating process. >> watch booktv entire three-hour interswriew the historian tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. the u.n. is your government and mine. and it can be as far from the governments as these governments wanted to be. and sometimes we talk about the

u.n. as it -- as they distance in ourselves by doing that we are giving the governments who are ultimately responsible fors -- and the secretary general but one of my predecessors used to say that we often refer to the secretary general -- stands for a scapegoat. [laughter] >> capabilitily. there is a scapegoat function of the u.n., but member states and the mid ya have to be careful not to dump on them so much we won't be useful as an an al by. >> more with former u.n. secretary general interviewed by bbc america on "after words."

on bock -- booktv. booktv speer viewed professor bonnie morris at georgetown university about her book revenge of the "revenge of the women's studies professor" based on the one-woman play. this interview is part of booktv's college series. it's 45 minutes. professor bonnie morris in your book "revenge of the women's studies professor" published by indiana university. i want to start with chapter four and read a little bit. >> professor morris i'm sorry to bother you like this. could we talk privately for a moment? you see, i enjoy your women's story studies class. i do. i love it. i want to finish out my semester. my husband feels differently. he i hads it's a lot of radical i ideas and he wants me to drop your class right now. he doesn't like me going out to take a woman study class even

though it's once a week and it counts toward me finishing my business degree. she are invited to dinner. i went to meet her husband and win his approval. i talked lightly about camping and hiking and movies while he stairedded at my bust. he stood up to shake my hand saying well, i guess i thought you'd have horns on your head and come dressed in a site of armor. i reckon you're woman enough after all of this. >> this is a true story, and the book is based on my one-woman play which in turn is placed on actual incidents in my career teaching women studies, and when i was in graduate school, i was able to start teaching my my own women's history courses. as soon as i had a master degree i taught night school.

it employed working women. many of whom was 36 and 40. i was 21 at the time. these women were coming back to school. they were returning adult studentses. they had amazing stories, what i was able to offer was a history of what they were experiencing as women in the work force balancing career and family. but i did have a student who really had what i can now look back on as the "hint" of a domestic problem. i wanted her to stay in school, so an example of a husband who had a stereo type about what goes on in a women history class. i knocked myself out trying to win enough of his approval that he would not keep his wife out of class. that was in new york, and a time when there was -- as now poverty and struggle. but a desire for education for

many women, and unfortunately then as now, women history is a seeing a controversial with too many people. >> what is women's studies? >> well, women's studies, of course, is an effort to fill in the blanks what we are not talk about about how terms of how women contributed to planet earth, and for the most part, women's contribution to history have been overlooked or trivialized or simply absent. we learned about the history of great men, the founding fathers, that's all considered the public side of history and women are seen as the private side. people are respectful what goes on in the family but what goes on in the family is private. some is not seen as important. because women are also traditionally portrayed as modest or hidden, bringing attention to what women do or

how women contributed always returns to the question of the body. so for one thing, many people object to bringing women's studies or women history to a middle school, high school classroom because there's an assumption that women's studies is only about sex, birthday control, abortion, and actually and also about women in politicking, women in law, women working on farms, queens, prime ministers, and my job is to break down the fear many people have -- what goes on, you know, women's studies classroom. don't you sit around in a circle hums and give each other exams? no. i have students come me thinking the class will either be radical or easy, and they're horrified to learn they have to take tests and write papers, and they can

actually funk women's studies. as the courses have gradually become mainstream, i attract people who want that humanitarians credit and think it will be my easy class while i take my premed spring. many of the sad faces in my office, how can i possibly earned a b? well, you know, you really need to know the names of sol of these foremothers, no, you didn't get this that in high school. you have to read the book. one of the things i do, i'm a reader for the apu history exam every june i read about 1100ap eases essays and we do have content on women history that is part of standardized testing. everybody has too know more women's history than they used to be considered an honor student or get advanced credit, that's elevated the status of

women's history. that has not eliminated the kinds of questions and nervousness i encounter every semester with a lot of people. >> host: if you teach a freshman survey class, how many men are in the class? >> that's a good question. i do, i teach women in western civilization. i would say it's about 10%. it depends on the year. sometimes in a group of 100 i'll have 17 men, 12 men, they are great. the guys are often some of the best students. i can also say interestingly, i tend have a lot of international male students, i think many of them have been pretty upfront about wanting to look at gender issues. they come from the middle east or korea, pakistan, i've had students who have told me deliberately they want t take the class because it's the only

time they'll have a chance. they won't back in bahrain. i have guys who are very upfront about being raised by single moms. they are respectful of what women have done historically or to keep families together, and i also just have really smart guys who were political science majors, or who intend to pursue careers in everything from justice to law. >> do you have that student that male student in the class to maybe sees this as a -- more knee nefarious? >> sure, i have guys raise their hands in object assistance. they have but not anymore than women. i have more conservative women than i used to in parts, again, because the field has been mainstreamed. we have people like cay bailey hutchison writing a women

history textbook. it's no longer considered a brand of radical feminism to women history research. that's a whole another topic. it's also threw a lot of people are shocked by what they're learning. they never learned that, you know, women couldn't do this until 19 whatever, they didn't know that women were forbidden from serving on juries or attending princeton until 1968. so the result is a lot of folks who say wait a minute, where are you getting that? and that's a natural reaction, but i would also say that once in awhile, we'll get somebody who is just very uncomfortable because the subject matter is painful. it's painful to look at the history of exclusion and assault. so what i have to do as an academic is to say, in the discussion section, please feel

free to respond as personally orb as angryingly or emotionally as the readings work you. in the smitten work you have to be professional, scholarly, empire call, and reasonable. that's the deal. you can say whatever you wish all political opinions can lead to an a. you don't have to have one view. ly evaluate your writing based on a good, you know, scholarly style. and so i teach many athletes, i also teach women's sports history. sometimes the athletes will use a little bit of street slang, and i have to write in the margin, let's find another word for this. so it's really more about teaching folks to write about personal history in a way that

is professor, and not so much people challenges me because they're horrified by the subject women. >> what does do with a women's study major? >> that's a common question. the quick answer is law school. most of the students i've worked who have been minors, majors in women's studies go to law school. they do very well. a lot of women and men do work on women in development often in africa, south asia, south america. they build women's sheltering sheltering with they run agencies. many go to work for non-profit and go. some do website design for women's organizations, or become directors ever women's shelters. i have lots of students who do internships with the different groups in d.c. whether it's

planned parenthood or working for a little bit of international focus too. there's also a lot of students who will minor in women's study and they combine it with a health degree, they're going to be nurses, doctors, there's a lot of folks who are looking at the impact of more access to education. girls and women in the rest of the developing world and these include students ready to go to work for the world bank. they have a background on gender which assists them and how you plot programs that can assist families. >> when did the women's study movement begin? who were some of the mother mothers? >> great question. the first program was at san diego state university in 1969. we've had a forty-year

anniversary for a couple of years now. it was based on, obviously, the feeling of the time of bringing real topics in to the university whether it was the peace movement or black studies. but there was an obvious lack of coverage of women's issues and women were not welcome still at the lot of schools. if you look at the book "who is who in women's studies in 1974". a lot of the first classes were being taught by nones at catholic women colleges. they had titles like "women in society" those were the justice, activism, post vatican ii feeling. inspect terms of women history, one of the main proponents was girdle learner who was an amazing historian and refugees from nazi germany. my particular mentor alice kessler harris in one of my

years of grad school was also a refugees from the holocaust. a lot of the women who started women's history had amazing stories of their own to tell and were also persons who knew very well what it's like for history to try to make all people invisible. i think that's an important side note. you couldn't do a doctorate in women's history in too many places until the late '80s when i started grad school, it was one of about four places in the u.s. and the big change has been that women's studies programs have been offering degrees that range from a minor in certain to a masters, and george washington university where i also teach is the oldest ma program in women's studies in pub lick policy in the country. the focus here in d.c. is more

on women in government. but other programs around the u.s. you find more of a focus on women in literature, women in psychology, and a lot of the programs bring together faculty students, and administrators every year through something called a national women's study association. for women's history there's something called the we are shire conference once every four years a big gathererring of women history experts, male and female, these are all wonderful events you see the rake of range of topics everyone is interested it. it's everything from the renaissance to female pirates, i've done work on jewish's history and immigration, women in sports, women in war, women in rock and roll, and it feels

an ageless hunger to go to the events and really meet your colleagues. >> professor morris, is women's studies a u.s. fee nonthat or u.s. movement, and has it been internationalized? >> pretty global. one of the things i have learned is some of the same challenges exist internationally. i have taught on a prpl called "semester at sea" popular with undergrads twice in 1993 and 2004. and on each occasion, it's 100-day voyage, you take about 4 to 800 students around the world on a ship. twelve countries. what currency, are we using? have i had my shot. look whales. not only through the semester at sea, i took the one-woman show

to different sites including new zealand, israel iceland. i encounter them in twenty students. they have the exact same story. everyone is made fun of for pursuing research on women, everyone has to spend more time articulating why to you want to look at women than talk abouting what they have learned. we're always depending our choice of subject matter. on the other hand, there's a fantastic networking, the internet is knead possible for me to connect with women study's faculty all other the world. the first program, i really got friendly with online in monogoal ya. they were crin incriedble. we have two books, can you send us more? we can't fail.

we are the daughter of -- i showed my dad, no self-est steam problem there. i shipped every book i had to monogoal ya. when i did my presentation -- everyone in government came to hear me speak. i had to prepare a welcome speech in icelandish because everyone wanted spoke english, i wanted to try. and even with all of the gender-equality it's view anemic -- unique to that community. there was a sense of how do you present information on women in a way that's not overly sexualized or that doesn't marked at women. there's just different issues in every country. in new zealand, the big question was indigenous women's rights.

there the land rights of women, they were very confrontational with me. what are you doing to reach out to native american women. that was the kind of question you would have not had in a different context. so going are from place to place was the same presentation has been very useful for me to broaden my range, frankly. >> what was your meeting with fidel castro? >> okay. so, first of all, state department permission and all the paperwork in hand for a semester at sea to dock in havana as an education group. we thought we would spend three days tours havana and meeting some students and going to a baseball game. that's it. on the last day, word came out fie dahl castro is going to speech at the university. you are invited. quite a few people from the ship said no thank you. i don't care to.

with strong feelings about him. i went with some of the faculty and students, we had headsets and he spoke for four hours without stopping. he held a class of water and never took a sip. and we were invited to have drinks with him downstairs, it was an out of body experience. i thought i'm having a moe drink with fidel castro. i was one of few women. i was wearing a bright yellow dress. for whatever reason, his fancy game over, grabbed my arm, it women read in the world, there would be no war. maternal instrict is strong. do you not agree? i don't agree, actually, look at the war-like leaders we've had or women who had to have knowledge about.

i started talking about margaret thatcher. it was wonderful. and i sent off an e-mail that night to my parents, i had drinks with fidel, of course, there was sure, you did. and the photographs followed. that's not going happen begin. -- again. it was a chance to debate essential stereotypes about female power with a known dictator. wow. yeah, that was an unusual day. >> when you teach about margaret thatcher, how do you approach her? >> well, having seen meryl streep in the "iron lady" i love her, that was an amazing film. one of the things margaret thatcher is known for is not being so much an afish nad dough of feminist legislation. she's a good example of a woman who had to be more or less accepted as quote, an honor rare

man in order to be taken series on a man's stage. that is jumping point for students to talk about what degree have we made everyone male and say now we have a quality, and we have constantly moved women in ever more opportunity once available for men, sports, law, military, government, not the priesthood, okay. we don't see women having attracted men to traditional women's work which is very still very low paid or devalued. dark, et. cetera, there's general cultural anxiety women have had to break in to the old boys' club or imitate public as expects of strength that somehow defemme nice them, and boy, my

students are really interested in those issues. how do you negotiate? does a woman have to be war-like? how does one bring in a sense of difference? should there ever be acknowledged difference between men and women. if you advocate for maternity leave are you going to be seen somehow of lower productivity or standards of security. you can get all of that -- who had had to function as often the only woman at the power meeting. >> bonnie morris, you also met with president bill clinton. >> that is a great story. i actually met him twice. he was christmas shopping and i was in the mall, and that was fun. but formally, we met at the basketball game, and my first

year, i was teaching at george washington, and he brought chelsea to a game, and first there was a men's game then a women's game. not scheduled like that anymore. in '94, the president sat in on the men's game. when the women's game began he got up to leave. i thought, okay, what are you going do bonnie? i charged in to the bleachers when where he was very comfortably shaking hands with pretty, you know, approachable secret servicemen letting him meet the people. i stuck out my hand and hi, mr. president, i'm a women's study professor here. i would like you to encourage your support for title ix law. we have a great team what do you

say? he said, i would love to. i have a meeting at the white house at 3:00. i said you can watch the first twenty minutes. i thought well, i have given a direct order to the president of the united. and he sat back down! so he sat down, he watched the women and he became the first u.s. president to telephone con congratulations winning women team in the ncaa. i would like to think i had something to do with that. you have to 0 have a certain kind of confidence to just jump in and say, hey, this is not fair. or look at what this symbolizes. living in washington, teaching near the house white house, i live in an embassy neighborhood, i'm really -- how we showcase

who is in charge. what is power? where women are perceived as matters. that was a small example where i really did have a chance to say, gosh, don't you like women's sports? i do. and i teach these women. and they not only can, you know, really do those layup, they are smart and they are here on scholarship just like the guys. don't you want to applaud them? i co. i think now we have fathers of daughters who are? sports. we with more men advocating for that too. but that's they is not going repeated. >> bonnie, morris, when were you raised? what do your parents do? what is their attitude. >> i owe everything to my are a and roger. i was born in los angeles in the '60s and raised by parents who were very liberal. in fact, they had a very unusual

romantic intermarriage. they were cautioned not marry, i had a jewish mother and my father was a surfer. and everyone thought at time it was a big deal. now it seems not anything to write home about. we were expose to the social issues in the '60s an my father in particular gave me a reading list when i was as young as nine which including black power literature, "to kill a mockingbird" and alice walker. he didn't know she was in that volume. and we went on many peace marchs and then when we moved to the east coast, i went a quaker school, carolina friends which was progressive but had a women study's curriculum. i was able to start taking women's history in a formal classroom setting but a school

that encouraged learning at your own pace. when i was 12, and i was able to sort of pursue the subjects that interested me because i had been, you know, tested and pronounced gifted at an early age. a lot of teachers were very interested in mentoring me and working with me. i had all of that as a kind of privilege. have to acknowledge, and my women's studies classes at school were really simultaneous emersion how did women get to vote. when were the first women's history conferences in the 19th century? and also we looked at some of the issues of the day that equal rights amendment and arguments about female equality in our own time. i'm still in touch with all of those teachers and all of those folks. but clearly it had a huge

impression on me. i went from taking women's studies to teaching it within ten years, actually. >> who were some of your personal heroes? >> boy. should have crammed for that one. well, boy. right off the top of my head, early on in life it was women writers like lewis who wrote harriet the spy, and of course harper lee "to kill a mockingbird." those two books shaped my life. the famous tennis match in '73. surely, my mother took me to hear when she ran for president in '72. i heard her speak at duke university which was very much aware that a black woman was running for president. i was trust rated i could not

vote yesterday. -- yet. later on i was very impressed by the emerging voices of lesbian authors rhee that may browne, ad degree began rich. i had an interest what was going on globally in terms of jewish women who had resistance fighters in the holocaust and then the memoir as to who wrote about the sphrug -- struggle for women who tell their story in a female voice, and initially i majored in jewish history in undergrad and lived in israel for a year. so kind of all over the place in terms of survivors those on unafraid to speak, those who were able to use the written word the way i hoped to one

day. >> contemporarily with who were some of your heroes? >> well, i'm thinking who do i have up on the wall in my office? donna brazil, who is my office mate here at georgetown. certainly hillary clinton, i admired her struggle. i am very impressed by all of the women who have broken through in women's sports and who have managed to articulate to the next generation that that's a possibility. all the big her -- i am a big fan of the women who have done a lot of work building the national women's history museum, we're trying to establish in d.c., and that croi ceo is joan but meryl streep is working assed at spokeswomen.

it's a virtual museum right now. i am also a person who is, you know, a fan, i guess you could say, of some of the women who have broken ground like ellen degeneres who went from being vilified to loved by millions. an amazing person. cartoonist for the same reason. clinton comedian for the same reason, and i also think certainly alice walker for really establishing attention to the literature of women of color in a way that made space for many other authors, but of course, she was instrumental which i was in grad school. >> what about sandra day 0'connor. >> this program and ruth baiter begins berg all of the supreme

court women. alaina cagen, we went from zero to several in my life tomb. it would be nice to have and half. you would have to have half of a person because of nine. i worked on a film "if women ruled the world." it was capital of rue we had a dinner party women who arrived and prior to the filming there was a cocktail reception, i was able to meet sandra day oh oh o'connor. and various women who were part of the dinner party. that was exciting. actually asked sandra day oh connor who said she admired. she said mia hamme because the american women had won the world cup. it was delighted that she

advocated for greater attention to women's sports. that was a thrilling occasion. i was definitely one of theless famous people in a room full of high achievers. but my role was to sort of represent the women's history person, and part of the film i took my students on the trolley around d.c. we pointed how few statutes of women there are and how easy it is to imagine women as justice and liberty. we have obviously the statute of liberty holding upscales. we don't have that many women cast in marble. there's a controversy how the marble statute of the suffer gist was the baifm of the capital was in lugged upstairs and the complaint was, it's so heavy and dusty. yes, so is women's history.

it's heavy, it's dusty, bring it out in the open. >> what do you think of the sculpture of the three women? >> i think it's great. i think i support those who truth should be part of it. a lot of what i do is who is no here. who are black women, slave women, servant girls in this overview of -- in this time period what were women doing? fact, i'm really upfront with one of my midterm, if you don't acknowledge that we had the double standard in the 19th century. women are delicate and shouldn't do sports. we also had slavery. it you don't talk about that you don't get an a. no one is going get an a if they say women were not allowed work hard in the 19th century. that's just inexcusable.

so it surprises some people when a white women's history professor devotes so much time talking about the history of nonwhite women, but the biggest trap is to have women's history equal white women's history. that is no different than, you know, other kinds of exclusion. i wish i had more time in a semester to cover the communities that are still not well represented and more and more looking at whether women disablities or what have you. there are students who have are so moved their background is mentioned at all. it's astonishing to get e-mails and cards and letters from

students for the first time ever hearing about someone who represents their community. maybe they have been from school from age 4 to 20, they're finally hearing about not just the female hero or one that is latino or deaf or gay orb in the army or whatever it might be. >> have any of your views changed since you have been teaching women's history and studying women's history? >> yes, they have. i'm much stricter. i used to be an easy grader and i'm really mean now. i'm horrified by the lower standards of reading and writing. i don't want to get in to who we blame or what have you. i get students e-mail me with text messages speak. hi prof, how are u? i went to a hippy school, i

thought i would be a mellow person. no! i give out pages of single spaced etiquette guides. don't address me as hey, prof. i'm approachable. you're going write a letter to the editor one day. i'm an editorial strict woman now. i'm also, you know, more cautious about being too open to people coming in to my office hours and on unburdened personal relationship drama. i have to to be a little more detached because occasionally i'm not the right person. i'm not a therapist, i'm a rabbi, i'm not a spiritual adviser. i know, what my professor

obligation and limitations are. here's what strange, i'd old now. i am old enough to be my students' moms, so they don't see me as their generation, which when i started my students were older than me, right. that was an evening out and now i'm the mom figure. i come from a time with a cultural literacy that includes, you know, the war in vietnam, and when people first started to have computers and cell phones. so my film and literature references have to be updated, that is a whole extra job to be current. on the other hand, i'm as a near-age -- mother-aged person supportive and loving and pat on the back the way it matters in some scenarios.

somebody who is finally achieved, i can be a substitute parent. i have a lot of students far from home. the other thing, connecting that with the question how perhaps have my views changed? i understand -- i don't like it, i understand that it's just generational to reject what your parents did. students who reject feminism or who see women's history as part of their mom's era of women's live. i understand that comes from the need to detach yourself from what your parents' generation did. when i have students who make fun of women's history or who want to begin a sentence with i'm not a feminist but my bomb was. that's a function of time passing. it's not so much an oppositional

political ideology. i've learned where is a student trying to define herself as different from mom, she probably agrees with a lot of the same things. and the funny thing that shows up is many of my students don't want to identify as women. they're taking women's studies or women's history, but they identify as girls. they see woman now as a term that represents their mother, their mother's generation, women's rights, womens live, "i am women, hear me roar." they are in a terrible economic moment. they don't expect to own a home or that that kind of settled family life maybe as early as another generation hoped. so they see woman symbolizing a soccer mom who is owning her own

house. they don't think they'll be a woman until they are 30 and advanced degree. we were identifying as women as 12. it's really changed. also young women are entering puberty earlier, they have a longerred adolescence. let's say you're capable of having a child at 10, but you're going delay marriage until you're 0. you get all of those degrees. that's twenty-yeared a lens. a lot of the conflict, reaction, controversy about how we teach women's history is also affected by the way age groups have shifted around, folks wanting to distinguish themselves before those who came before them. anxiety about being a grown up and what it means financially. i have to lightening rapidly

make all of these calculations where is this student coming from in their caution or stereotyping about women's mist? is it from their family heritage, their desire to get ahead, their sense of a feminist is ugly. i better not identify as one, and the only way to break down all of these fears is with humor because exactly what people want to project this image of the women's study professor as a scary, un attractive with an ax. when i come in and i'm cheerful and california girl, and can talk about body surfing or whatever seems unthreatening, it helps to situate a student who really expects some kind of, you know, humorless demon, and then

we talk about why those stereotypes exist. >> finally, bonnie morris, why revenge of the women's movement? >> i'm notful vengeful violent person. i wanted to talk about the issues why are students afraid of taking women's studies? ..

and it was definitely maybe able to talk back to all the people that out to me or had said women's studies doesn't matter, including that husband who didn't want his wife and my class. so i thought well it's almost like to read fringe degette -- revenge of the women's studies professor. my motives of operandi in life is when i've been insulted or i find things that are offensive i often turned into a short story. first i will write in my journal and then i will turn it into a essay. that is a way of getting that kind of insult out of the body and into a public literature.

so, there is that saying revenge is a dish best eaten cold. there's that weeding period when you think about how you want to top that but in a reflective and thoughtful period that will convince people what you want to say and so revenge of the women's studies professor. here i am, i'm going to tell you what happened as i tried to become a really good professor and how i got through to have the last word, and that is the only reason shall i really want to show the stereotypes' are funny but they can hurt and the student should never be discouraged from looking at the history of their mother. >> "revenge of the women's studies professor" bonnie morris

professor here at georgetown. women's history, women's history for beginners. >> that's right. that is book number eight, and it is going to be out of the 14th of february, valentine's day. that is a good introductory textbook which starts right within the first woman and goes from there. that's part of the whole wonderful series from the beginners' press economics for beginners, einstein for beginners, so it begins with why don't we know more about winans history, who is invested in you not knowing and then it goes through a basic or not so famous women and lots of resources. i have a wonderful illustrator, and that is intended for high

school as well as college classrooms and the approach to women's history in a way that should not intimidate that instruct and i had a lot of fun. >> what is the illustration in your book? >> the illustration of where women have been kept out of public life because a woman in public is assumed to be somehow unchased cony and one reason we don't know about women's accomplishments is a good girl is not supposed to be known by anyone but her male relatives. so there is a lot about the emphasis in scripture that women should be heading from other men. it's very hard to become famous if that is equated with a modesty. >> bonnie morris, professor here at georgetown.

thank you. >> thank ou. >> the ulin government is us, yours and mine, and as powerful as these governments wanted to be coming and sometimes we talk about the u.n. has them and distancing ourselves. in doing that and giving the government will ultimately they are responsible for action and inaction, and evan bayh by blaming -- but one of my predecessors used to say that we often refer to the secretary-general and said doesn't stand for secretary-general, it stands for east cape route. >> the good a function of the u.n.. the member states and the media have to be very careful that we

want to be useful as an alibi. next on the ben hellwarth talks about the navy experiment launched in 1964 to study the ocean floor and test the limits of our ability to live deep under water for long periods of time. this is about an hour and 15 minutes. [applause] >> thanks everybody for coming out on a mostly sunny saturday afternoon here in santa monica. i grew up searching the beaches and realize sometimes it is harder to stay inside on days like this although it is cooler today so it's a great day to talk about books like "sealab,"

which i have written. i'm going to jump in. well, let me just say you know the book is called "sealab." [laughter] i should say that for the record. the forgotten quest to live a work of the ocean floor which maybe is a little bit of a mouthful but when the book came out, the subtitle was recognized the subtitle of the week by publishers weekly so i took that to be a complement and i figured the main title is short so would also balances out for the best and tells you what the book is about. i am often asked how i got the idea for this book or where it came from, and so i think i will start from the beginning and then i will talk about the story of "sealab" come and introduce

you to some of the characters. i've got some rare audio and video to share with you to kind of show you what this is about. of course we will have time for your questions at the end which would be great so if questions occur to you as i am going along, hang on to them and i would be glad to answer them at the end. "sealab" was working and not far up the coast here in santa barbara for the daily newspaper and writing about lots of things, different kinds of things in that area in the daily newspaper writer of you and somebody suggested once that i attend a gathering of commercial diary is going on as big commercial communities and the santa barbara area code on the

one of the biggest fighting companies in the world said the idea is they are having this audience at the place known as the lost had in santa barbara so i figured this is the place i need to go especially when you are, but how bad could it be. to see what was going on and the idea was to dredge up the situation in the newspaper, and really what happened is this crowd of old-time commercial divers most from southern california and elsewhere and while i am hearing all of these crazy alien sounding stories of working underwater and accidents and the weird things that go on when you are under water much like when you are in space more familiar when they are working under water. so, i came away from this event thinking what another world come and one thing that somebody said that stuck with me when he spoke

of doing deep dives, the dives were so deep and the gas was so pressurized that it was like breathing peanut butter and i thought what? breeding peanut butter? what is that about? that sounds completely sci-fi and weird. i don't understand that. as a kind of followed that away. i never really did wind up writing about this party for the papers i recall that it was a lovely evening vote. and a lot of nice people and i got some connections for some other stories. so, in case any of my old bosses are watching it wasn't completely time squandered up there. [laughter] not just drinking up there with the commercial divers. i had also at that time gotten it in my head that might like to take on a work of the acclaimed nonfiction. i've done newspaper style feature writing in journalism, and for the length that is allowed for that format.

and so, i was kind of on the lookout for the ideas of a book that might be worthy of a story coming and you can kind of see where i am headed now. so when i got out of the daily newspaper business and we restructure our family and moved back east, i basically went to the library and with my ideas that had to do with deep diving, commercial fighting, weird stuff that goes on under water, so their research on these things. and then "sealab" starts popping up. wow, "sealab," that's pretty fascinating and interesting. there must be at least several books about this. the first thing i should do is find out what has been written so far about it and the answer was really nothing had been written about it. and this is sort of mind blowing. if this thing was -- the u.s. navy project in the 1960's, pioneering under water, science exploration, where is the book?

what i found were a couple of memoirs that had been written by the key participants who we will meet in just a moment here, and those were great background but no one had put all the pieces together. but "sealab" was, what it meant, and the legacy that is with us here today in terms of what people are able to do in the ocean as workers and researchers and scientists and everything else. so, great news for a journalist. alone in the library somewhere going i think i got something here with this sealab thing. so i started doing the preliminary research and indeed it is the focal point the way the mercury project was of the effort to really break some barriers that had existed for a long time not in the sky but in terms of human ability to go under water. so there was a kind of science

and exploration aspect those fascinating and a good sign that there was a story of it, and the other was the central character named dr. george pond who seen in his trench coat and kunes -- coonskin cap where is the diving gear? dr. bond actually started his career with a rural practice with the have and what not in the backwoods of the blue ridge mountains serving a small community there and i'm going to read you a short piece from the book to introduce captain bond and tell you where he came from. you can see why i found him a fascinating character. already kind of an unlikely one to be someone who will be considered the father of sealab.

this is a bond in the 1940's and jumping back he's not quite 10-years-old when his father died late in the summer of 1925. but the family could still afford a nanny. as a teenager at the academy in pennsylvania, he worked on the monthly literary magazine and became known as the class poet. he took a pipe smoking as a teen and developed what would become a lifelong fondness. his nickname wouldn't have shot his bosses and they called him of rubble. after graduating in 1933 a few years in the great depression bond enrolled at the university of florida. the course was divided interest of letters and scientists though he generally did better in the class of english and imaginative writing the and general chemistry. the literary at least initially the bachelors of arts degree and

went straight into the university of florida graduate program for the master's degree. he studied a question for the thesis he read about the abolition dialect spoken around of the cave. a hamlet in the blue ridge mountains about 10 miles from the family's summer home at chesnutt gap in west carolina. bonn had gotten to know him named for the nearby tavern that was a seasonal home to migrating back. when he went to summer camp in the area after his father died. in the formative years the older sister and brother continued to live with their mother, louise, a college-educated woman at the family -- as the family moved between the land florida, where bond mostly grew up although the family was originally from ohio coming into the more modest home at chestnut gap. he loved the rocky wooded areas of the cave and chimney rock and bear wallow. he spent days horseback riding and fishing with his two best

friends, lonnie hill both work with formal education but that made no difference to bond. himself he served as one of the 15 master's thesis subjects and helped bond gather material. bond made notes of the pronunciation and appellation pros and as i will take no back staff off of you coming and it went blinky on need. bond was inspired by the rustic ways of the mountain people and their independence. as a kid, he once lived with ben konar at their place on the branch from a little tributary near the head of the broad river. then konar was removed, but his wife was wired, snaggletooth. it was dougy who said something like george, why don't you go to school, making medical doctor and come back here. we've never had one and we need one bad. bond decided he should go down the professional trail to

follow. he knew firsthand there was a need for the doctor and mountains. as a boy he had seen two people die aid and with his side on medical school he enrolled at the university of north carolina chapel dillinger early 1940 and spent the next 15 months shoring up the science background and got a good living from students with a worse to campus. so, there you have a guy that i'm learning about and thinking okay, i think we may have a story. so, bond does follow that medical path that was suggested and spends a good part of his career serving the community of about 5,000 people through the cave, very primitive circumstances, very challenging and demanding work running around in his jeep having to persuade people to take shots and modern medicine in the area where people were not always trusting of those methods.

people loved him and he got quite a lot of attention for what he was doing there. so much so that he wound up as the featured guest on a popular 1950's tv show "this is your life," which some of you may remember which was sort of like the american model of its day but a lot less singing and also at the time when not everybody was on tv. it was unique and worthy of praise. so, you know, by that point bond had been in the navy for a couple of years and the time of the tv show was headed back to the practice, but at the time he was in the needy, he discovered that he really was fascinated with dieting. he spent his time in a navy as a submarine medical officer which also required him to be trained

as a diver and he got fascinated with diving and wound up turning his practice over to another doctor and staying in the navy where he became the head of the medical research laboratory at the u.s. naval submarine base in connecticut which is a major submarine base in the u.s.. in that laboratory, he grew interested in pursuing the questions and that he had found fascinating in his early naval

career around diving which was that conventional by evening was that most diverse had to be relatively shallow and they would last a matter of minutes, not hours or days or weeks, and bond got this idea that the time had come much as humankind was starting to launch people into space and push the boundaries of flight the same thing should be happening under water and we should be able to dive deeper and stay longer, and why has that not happened? let me explain on page 16 here. so, he's in the navy running the medical research lab and he's starting to circulate these

ideas that the conventional diving seems rather outdated. we ought to be able to do better than this. that a driver might be able to stay on indefinitely and even live on the seabed in some kind of shelter like an underwater version of the space station. this is what he was thinking that he was thinking ahead of his time of like talking about supersonic flight that seems feasible and what a bond was talking about and in some ways with supersonics is to flying because with such a patient use methods that enable you to make these launder deeper dive. so, he's got this vision coming and he's going to meet in a minute here.

we should go back to bond here. >> one is that no such seabed a growing had been built and the other was the concept of living and working in the sea than putting a man on the moon. she accepted the diving limits typically allowed for the bottom times of the minutes the deeper the dive the shorter the state. no one spent hours and days nor long periods exposed to high pressure in the water were in the try chamber. the limit for most of the divers even the surgeons was far less than the initial target of 600 feet but as a scientist, he believed it could all be done. as a man of faith, he believed there would and this was another aspect of his personality where he believed there was almost a biblical kind of manifest destiny about this base based on the opening of genesis that

talks about men having dominion over the fish of the sea, and bonn had become a religious fellow and he wasn't raised that way, but he took off an interest in a student of the bible in shakespeare when he was doing his english major so, to finish and give you a lot of context where he was, the sound barrier had been broken earlier in 1947 ushering in a space-age, but the divers remained intact although no one must fall on those terms it wasn't a part of the lexicon and there was nothing as specific as the speed of sound and nothing was as dramatic to puncture the equivalent underwater achievement. as bond had learned during his navy school training no one learned the answer is as the essential questions how long command st how deep can a man go.

you might think the speed of sound are the highest of everest it's something that is known how long can you go and how deep can you stay down nobody knew nobody was interested until bond started to gather people around him at the medical research laboratory to save this as read be possible or kill you basically. same as in space. so, with the help of his right hand man who happened to be around the lab to strike a conversation that i described in the book coming and he is not easily impressed and is really quite a different character from bond as i just described.

yes, all business perfect right-hand man to georgia bond as the chance that haven't. together with of the navy school of approval at this point, they began in their lubber trey during test with animals and the dogs and the monkeys could handle the g forces and the weightlessness and the rest of that. these things were concerned with prolonged exposure to pressure and breathing artificial recipes of gas mixtures the would be necessary if you are going to breed them at deep depth. so bond along the side of the chamber here that is a medical care what they can pass materials through.

although initially it was animals, and bond actually called the early laboratories genesis and the was straight out of his belief that this ability to do this was tied up in their early lines of the bible, is the genesis experiment started with animals to make sure that this was going to be safe for people and then work on human test subjects. he was also around the submarine base at that time. he was a diver but was involved in sealers and submarine at the submarine base. he did travis dr. bond. he was a guy that a lot of people really liked, and barred was one of them -- barth was one

of them. when bond is looking for volunteers, who wants to be locked up in the chamber for a week and you may not come out alive? [laughter] coming you know, dr. bond is the kind of -- have the kind of guy that barth is sure. i will give it a try. so he is geared up to try the human genesis experiment and is basically packing for a camping trip. they were not out for the long duration stay, so they had medical supplies and, you know, canned food and the whole thing and were doing a bunch of tests. there were a couple of others. one was a doctor that was doing physiological studies during all of this to make sure it was going to be safe. and at this point, bond had to get formal naval approval to use human volunteers. he could do that animal stuff a little bit on the download, but

when it came to locking actual people in the chambers they had a piece of paper work around that and there had to be volunteers. barth was one of them and he was involved from the very beginning of the program to its tragic and. barth was also one of the first people i met when i started doing my research and reporting on this project both when i came to the project barth was alive and well we're living in florida, and he worked closely with george pond than anybody was alive and well and living in san diego. george bond died about 30 years ago, so i never did meet him coming and the work became almost like doing a biography. but with the help of good sources like this the job was going to be possible. so one of the things you do when

you get started on the nonfiction project is to see if people are willing to talk to you because you need a lot of cooperation to get through the reporting and research of these things, so everybody said well, you are going to need barth's cooperation if you're going to make this flight. i had early conversations with him and went down to visit him in florida where he lives to kind of see how it goes. he's an interesting character as i describe in the book a little bit prickly. doesn't mix words, a little bit suspicious of people that call themselves journalists. but he says iker camano to florida and we could talk and see how it went, and it went very well. we did one day marathon interview of about five hours or something and the next day he showed me around the experimental base which is now down in florida, historically it was in the navy art in washington, d.c. which is another place you will come to know in the book. and the experimental diving unit

was basically like the edwards air force base of diving where all of the cutting edge sort of stuff goes on and as was the place for the test pilots could be found. so, i'm off to a good start. barth is on board. he refers to mazzoni, he seems to be on board. i had this meeting with barth in florida coming and i call him up because it got this question about a report i found that suggested that one of the key pieces of the diving gear that they were using in much of the sealab experiments called the marck 6 problems and i wanted to understand because the was the total challenge visa guice face in addition to being in the water and cold and breeding strange mixtures of gas and all the rest of it this report clearly indicated that something was up. and i kind of knew that this was a little media early on in my

relationship with bob to be asking things like this but i was still getting to know people. so why went to him and here's part of our conversation. >> did you guys have -- i read some reports that talked about quite a few potential problems with the equipment, minor malfunction. >> we are fine. you have to be careful with it to read anything like a certain valve's you have to make sure are open and set it up. you couldn't put it directly on the bottle and started breeding in net. it set up with an instrument to make sure it started doing this and that, and it required your attention during her the use. >> it's unlike anything else of use like that. it requires you to be careful

about what you are doing. >> so you don't remember any -- >> not at all. we are fine. >> -- complaining much about that. >> they are all on the search looking for something -- you must have been in the newspaper business, ben. >> i.t. i was. >> you're always looking for something to figure out. i'm going to have an ex prosaic and figure out how the navy fucked up ended did this and that. you're not going to get that from me. >> this is a report that was written actually about some sort of a -- after the fact is a smith and one of the things that was mentioned was the problem of equipment. i thought i would ask you about it. >> the mark 6 was designed to go right to 180 feet or something like that. it was originally for the eob people. >> i was like i went to florida and that this guy and i thought

we had a great understanding and now he is going off on me and doing an expose a in the navy and i thought we were clear about this. what i kind of learned is that this sort of how bob is, even with his friends. [laughter] so really, when things like that would come up coming and they did, and i realize i was developing a valuable friendship here and take that as a badge of honor. as you can hear he goes on to explain as he did many times long conversations about how the different pieces worked and you can hear him explain about this. he didn't personally have a problem with it but i did have this report i had to deal with and follow some of the leads so that i could better understand what some of the changes were. but anyway, that, as i said, he wasn't a diet next words that that attitude is i kind of then still sort of young journalist. that conversation is from ten

years ago, and i am just getting started. i don't have a book contract but i thought i had an understanding and people on board so he freaked me out a little bit with that conversation. later in the conversation he sort of a public and said i don't need to get on your ass, ben. don't they take me too seriously. but the patients involved with people that pull off a work of nonfiction like this, i mean, you don't want to see the list of conversations i have had with him over the years. e-mails, follow-up questions, so you know, we are all sort of an offer you are indebted to these people for working with you on these projects. anyway, they pull what the human laboratory experiments. people seem to survive. the testing it at depths of up to about 200 feet. that seems to work. worked for the animals, and so

the next push was let's get this out of the laboratory in getting into the sea and see if it works, if we can have people on the ocean floor. so that they did by building the very first sealab habitat, which you can see. there is a guy standing to the left so you can get a sense of the scale. it's not a huge thing but it's built to house about four guys and it looks kind of primitive, not slick looking into the budget was very low and it's made out of recycled minesweeping floats that they sort of welded together. and we are going to put just about 190 some feet down off of bermuda. at this point, bond met jacques

cousteau. i point this out because he had gone ahead with his own undersea experiments, which i describe also in the book as part of the history. it inspired at least in part by george bond. we met in the late 1950's, and they had conversations of which bond was giving his bit about how really we ought to be able to meet on the ocean floor. my laboratory experiments with animals and living life as possible. jacques cousteau jumps ahead and set up projects of his own, which was actually great news for bond. it's a good advertising. jacques cousteau is doing it, how crazy could this be? [laughter] all the research showed their association wasn't close but they were friendly, kind of knew what each other was doing. and in fact, cousteau had a couple of of servers that were

hanging around during sealab one and learned more about how this was working. this was bond and cousteau at a conference they both attended. not the only conference on underwater activities as they were often called that the two were at together. these are your first american aqua knots. you can't see them, you don't know when talking about, but july 28th 1964, also the date the would be hard pressed to find in the 100 greatest moments in the science of exploration of the century. [laughter] i challenge people to find this. i never have. but that is the day that these guys slam into this first american seafloor base at to entered become a substantial debt for a dive except they were going to stay there for three

weeks, which was absolutely unheard of, unprecedented, not even safe because who knew? you can see -- you can't see much that there is bob barth on the left, dr. bond, andy, dr. robert thompson, bond wanted a doctor down there in case to do further studies and keep an eye on things, and the diver sanders tiger manning. so on this date they swim into the lab from a pressurized elevator essentially that takes them down to the debt and -- barth and they have to get to the lab and i will explain how that works. but this is kind of the audio

from some tapes i can across in my research, and i should say one thing i found out early on with sealab is there was no catalog archive. this was in people's basements and drawers and something like a case of an unmarked if anyone remembers the real-to-real format because your digital now, so they are getting a pretty good riser the theory wonderful window into what these guys were doing. and the point i was going to make is some of this kind of archival material so familiar to us from the conversations between houston and the astronauts and the mercury projects of course right up to the moon landing and neil armstrong and one small step for man and a giant step for mankind. this is kind of that moment when it comes to americans setting up an outpost on the seafloor. you will hear what it sounds

like and you will hear the effect of helium on their voices, because one of the things they had to do is brief gases that were high and helium. if you've ever taken a hit off of a balloon you know it does funky things to your voice, and that is something else they had to contend with. let's hope we get the volume on this. >> [inaudible] >> i can hear you loud and clear [inaudible] am i connect, over. >> [inaudible] >> you are the first one. well mr. anderson congratulations.

were you able to hold your breath of the way? >> [inaudible] >> that was a pretty good swimmer, wasn't it? >> [inaudible] >> dr. thompson is and allow -- in the lab. that is the voice of dr. bond in the controlled and which is on the surface of the kind of barge

acting like a kind of mission control. you can kind of hear that. you can hear the come artery that goes on with bond. very serious enterprise, but they are kind of joking around. you can hear them the kind of can't help laughing the helium voice even though they've heard it before. and informality in the -- there's no particular order. they're coming to live in the sealab. who's next? i don't know, manning and thompson, and then it turns out dr. thompson comes up next. so he is the second one in the lab, and at the beginning you can hear george bond say i believe that is barth. i believe that is robert barth. no, it's anderson. whoever, it's good. it's all good. so that was the early days of sealab. it was successful now so the navy was buying into this war. the budget was getting bigger. the program is getting more formalized to the point it had its own logo much like nasa has

a familiar blue orb, sealab now had an emblem, a sign of its rising prestige, and also you can see you've got a more significant refined looking habitat which doesn't look quite so much like it's made out of recycled floats or whatever. you have some uniforms. it's got the sealab emblem. you can see the logo on the top of the lab on the towers of there's a great deal more pride and money and things happening now. this is the first of what would be the three teams to live in the lab over the course of several weeks. astronaut carpenter has joined the program buy now. we will talk more about him, but he's the second from the left on the front row right there. there's scott carpenter to read and going to play a brief clip

from the reel-to-reel tapes. these were unmarked and i had to listen to all of them just to find out what they were, listening for nuggets, learning more and more alone the way. but again, this is barth as a younger man who had been through all of these genesis experiments coming and completed sealab one and is now on one of the teams of aquanauts for sealab ii. at a press conference the question as asked why did you volunteer for this program and you will hear dr. bond kind of refer his question to barth at this point. >> bob barth has been with the experimental program and the operational much longer than any other man in it. would you care to pass on the word? >> while you were here?

>> i got started with the program working with dr. bond. i don't really recall when i volunteered. i don't believe i have yet. [laughter] we just work at an organization that started the work on the idea of man living under pressure from a long time. with myself and a few other doctors and fewer of us sitting around here now. they put genesis on sealab one and sealab ii and had a permanent job. like i said, i can't remember volunteering. [laughter] that is the very good question. >> you can hear the come artery and bond is very modest.

you were the first person to do some high risk pioneering stuff. tell me about it. you get an answer like this. genesis, the lab, and the guys in the chamber, now you have sealab one and too. [laughter] sweeny to a little extra digging on something that significant and that modest. sears scott carpenter, the astronauts turned aquanaut. she found out about bond through jacques cousteau. carpenter was interested in the underwater experiments, the underwater living that cousteau was doing. you aren't french and i can't pay you, they are doing this so why don't you go talk to him. they did. bond and cardinger hit it off, and bond is quite pleased to have somebody with the stature

of an astronaut mike scott carpenter who is probably the second american to orbit the earth in 72. tataris carpenter a few years later just getting in on sealab. but i am going to do is through the miracle of the various technologies is take you inside sealab ii see you can see what it looks like. this is pretty unfamiliar, the pressurized compartments and going through the hatch where the water stops at the doorstep, and so let me see if we can get to the scene. all right. can we see that at all? can we dim the lights? i think we can see that it will go all right.

inside the lab there is scott carpenter. it's a prototype commits the second one built. there are one years hanging around everywhere with about as much space to this side of the camera as there is going that way with the area in the back. there were ten guys on each of the teams so it is quite a good crowd for the space like that. it's very quite hot and humid and that's why you see the guys in their bathing suits and mabey t-shirts. i'm going to play this a long. >> the most sophisticated technology of our age. >> so carpenter is going over the daily plan. he's the designated team leader. there is driving -- diving deer that looks like old school stuff. high-tech for the time, designed to give them longer durations for the time than the scuba

diving would have allowed outside the lab so once they got out they could stay laundry and you can see the open hatch, and this is the whole idea, the sealab concept is if we can get guys down there living any time a night or day they can go out the hatch, the waters there, they have a shelter they can stay and in and out they can go to do experiments or whenever it is they please on the ocean bottom. so, out he goes. this is a little bit right in here to see this but let's see how we do. >> i guess it is clear the water is pretty dark. estimate that as part of the challenge, keeping them warm on

the diamonds was a big part of the challenge. they are driving at night so it's extra dark, a lot of potential to get lost and have all kinds of problems but it gives you a feel this isn't your caribbean diving vacation. this is pretty tricky stuff and they have lights are around the lab which helps. there is barth right there you can see his name helping another diver. the hatch wasn't big enough. they needed to make another one. was too small of the space. threat sealab the can do certain amount of cookie and they have hot showers which were critical after a cold swim, and here is dr. bond entertaining the crew down below with a vestige of his mountain days on the harmonica.

you can see the reaction with the shouts of glee coming back. and here is carpenter as you have probably never seen him before completing the ukulele and the helium atmosphere. ♪ they have dolphins involved to potentially act as st. bernard's if they got lost or injured. a dolphin named tuffy was trained to do this but the idea was a fait diver gets lost or injured, the dolphin goes and

gets the lab and safety. you can see it on a diet like this the visibility's and great. it wouldn't take a lot to wander off and get lost. they use a lot of tethers and things to keep their bearings. you can see of the dolphin swims away it isn't far he knows where it is. i will move along. this is dr. bond -- what's your bond. he is reading a sealab prayer. >> to get there be done. we ask all of this in the name of jesus christ our lord. >> so, that was something that

not all the guys were into but for dr. bond if you wanted to read a prayer on sunday by and people respected it and some people enjoy the service as well, this kind of church service. dr. bond had been a creature back in the mountains where he worked, so this was just part of his habit and something that became part of the sealab experience for those guys who were down there. i want to get to the q&a pretty quickly here, but i want to also just run this through. there is bob barth as a young man helping a diver jumps down. the reason they aren't wearing their gear and just swimsuits -- i don't know if we can see this. we can't see it very well. let's back up for a second. they are swimming over to the

pressurize the elevator that's taken down and looks like this. this is another prototype is only the second one that has ever been built. the aquanauts are in sight and you can see the chamber right here. it decided it but what i want to point out is this could be dicey operation on the ship and its moving if you use your pressure everybody dies and it's that simple. it's quiet and it doesn't look like much, the fireworks of a rocket have tended guys not a pretty death with the explosive decompression know what happened so these are critical moments and they were learning to do it properly to make it safe and this was a state of the program if anything went wrong that could be really bad for the program. so, you will see he as the

sealab moves along that it looks less permanent and a little more modern shall we say. that is the chamber where they are going to spend 33 or 35 hours in the chamber to decompress but with saturation diving as i mentioned earlier the idea is it is worth spending that many hours to decompress because you were able to live on the ocean floor indefinitely rather than going up and down as was done through the history of diving so it was a small price to pay for the amount of time you got to be down in the water. let's get this out of the way. well, this is george bond later in life. we saw him in his coonskin cap at the beginning that he became known as the father of sealab. he's got his uniform on and this

is the time of sealab ii three we've got just a couple more things to cover. one is i wanted you to hear the voice of dr. bond. we heard some on the radio before. this was the conference after sealab ii is complete and it's been largely successful and you can hear him answer questions about how the whole thing went and you can hear his understandable pride and confidence in the whole idea and even a little bit of bravado of some people in the navy who a few years before didn't think this was such a good idea. >> captain bond would you highlight the achievements of this experiment for us? >> i suppose from the principal investigators point of view the

major achievement is sending 28 men down and getting back 28. i see that not with my tongue in my cheek. this is a high-risk program as far as the material gains are concerned. it's an extremely hazardous program. these men are in hazzard 24 hours a day, so it is with a thankfulness i see them all return to the surface. the second highlight is confirmation of the suspicion some of us have had for eight years at least that it is possible indeed if you provide the satisfactory environment and a breathing mixture it's possible to put man under high pressures and a terribly hostile environment and have him do useful work coming been his place on the ocean bottom where perhaps man has a right and come

back successfully. this was highly contested some years ago. i think now what sealab ii we have demonstrated operation this can be done. the men in this room cumulatively have given you three and one-half million years on the bottom at 200 feet and it could have been 600 feet and will be 600 feet before it's over. that is a gross highlight. i think the third highlight for me is ought we have no criteria of selection in the proper sense of the word nor did we get to the talented forces or tests to select our aquanauts, these 28 men worked on the common purpose and work together in a fantastic

and good manners without friction, without jealousy, without all of the characteristics that plagued mankind when we were working together on the surface. there are common bonds. one is that they are all divers and they are taught to care for their sake buddy the had the same goal and worked in the directions there is the highlight. probably the greatest highlight is 1i see here today. something that started in almost a sub rosa fashion in the dark corners of the laboratory the work being done on the weekends, work being done sometimes without official sanction, work being done in the face of cries that this is madness, and the

inevitable question that came from some rather high people in the bureau's, what is the social significance of any work such as this? you are wasting your time and the navy's time. those questions i think our better answered today. i'm satisfied we now have a navy program and will go on and have support and the energy of the people and the interest of the people of the united states. we have seen the program grow, and we have seen it grow into a healthy child. of this, to me, is a personal highlight that i will never forget. those are the things that i would have. >> the voice of captain george bond, great american character who it's been my privilege to kind of introduce and get people better acquainted with.

>> it was greater by the time sealab 2 and sealab 3, but people rally behind i think we might see more than today but that was really the case. after they shut the program down, after sealab 3 at the tragic events around that which are really very much like a polyp 13. we all know apollo 13, the trip to the moon and how just barely kind of made it back. that was like sealab 3 instead of with a less happy any.

and one that resulted in the investigation, at the end of the program, but the programs and did not and the fact that they learned a lot after this, about deep diving and deficit at the outset it fundamentally changed human relationship with the seized. and this technology is still with us. the navy uses it, as far as, the navy went on to use it for clandestine deep diving operations. the offshore oil industry picked up on it right away because it was moving into deeper water just at the time sealab is coming of age. and it needed underwater workforce. it needed construction workers who could work for long hours at deeper depths than ever before. this is how you do it. those guys are out there today doing work that we don't see, worked we don't know in crazy places like the bottom of the north sea and rather insane conditions. and they are there as this

program, and there is only one remaining u.s. sponsored sea-based in existence, which probably most people don't know or can't name. it's the underwater version of the international space station essentially. it's owned by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration, noaa, and managed by university of north carolina, it's called aquarius and it's been in operation for about 20 years there for scientific purposes largely, and it's a descendent of sealab. and a significant one to the people who use it. there were several in between sealab and aquarius but that is another story. i'm going to leave it at that i think for now. but just to make sure, we will

just segue into the q&a here. i hope you have some, and i can't resist playing this. do we have volume here? ♪ >> yeah, a little more. ♪ ♪ >> extra points for whoever can do more that came from? somebody? [inaudible] >> you are personnel, you're not allowed to answer. the conflict of interest. yes, yes. the pop-culture vestige of sealab called sealab 2021 for

which that is the very catchy theme song by the band calamine. so you see the legacy continues. not just the military, not just in scientific and not just industrial, but pop-culture, too. so, questions? [inaudible] >> okay. >> i understand a challenge in this endeavor, but as i begin reading the book, one of the first thoughts occurred to me, are we late in this science? and given that mankind to explore the oceans -- [inaudible] traveling and so forth, and it seems that if we have just begun to explore, so my question is, my impression

mistaken or, that are we truly late in the science? >> late depends on the course of human history. it's never too late to start, but late in the sense, yeah, they had kind of a running start here in the '60s and it did peter out a little bit. used do to have bases like accordance and our people still talk about creating more basis like a quiz because scientists, marine sciences find it incredibly valuable to be around-the-clock on site with their observations and the scientific experiments, much as jane goodall went into the jungle to live with the chimpanzees. the same advantage can be had for scientists who don't have to limit their diet to 20 minutes or half an hour. so there's a huge potential there to do all sorts of things down to a variety of depth, and that is the question of will either, you know, will through government funding or will through clever private industry. there is some of that that has

tried this, to do more. but the methods and technology are there. as i mentioned in the book, if you've gotten that far, thank you for starting, the robotic technology has gotten really good so you can keep people out of harm's way completely and still do a lot of things you want to do, but do them remotely with robots and not put people in the picture. there's also a new generation of dive suits that's been in the works for a while, almost like a spacesuit in that you remain contain a near surface atmosphere, and don't even deal with diving and the elements, but you have a suit that is flexible enough and made of all the right mix of ingredients and medals and whatnot. that's almost as if you're a free swimming diaper but you're not exposed to the elements. so yeah, there's a varieties of things that could be done at

it's just with a lot of programs money kind of dwindled, and so there remains much that could be done, if someone decided. so, microphone. >> what does the cousteau family members doing nowadays? have they left the ocean business? >> now, the cousteau family carries on their tradition. the cousteau family if you know anything about it, there's been some good books written about it. there's a very compensated fairly, kind of to cousteau families it turned out, almost kind of a shakespearean situation. if you go googling, there's a couple of good biographies about cousteau that describes this better than i can. but no, they are largely in different areas of ocean

activities. jean michel cousteau wrote a nice blurb for my book is based in santa barbara, has an organization called ocean futures society is doing a lot of interesting work around the ocean, and he is one of cousteau two sons from his original marriage and family, and then there's another family that is also involved in ocean works. not everyone gets along so well so there some complications. yeah, the cousteau name goes on in that, in a lot of regards. and, of course, it's synonymous to all of us with ocean research and exploration. it's really quite a powerful brand you would say in the 21st century. >> there's a lot of fish that live down at a depth and have no trouble with the pressure and the gas pressure. two questions. if they come up to our

temperature and pressure from are they okay? sadly, our studies focused on the -- and how they resist that sort of environment? >> yes. [laughter] and that's a whole area of oceanography are not going to pretend to be an expert on. yes. i mean, all of these, a lot of questions about the fish and the animals, some of them are still mysteries. a lot of them are under study. my emphasis was on the people and the gear in getting this done so i can't talk knowledgeably about them but that's related subject. and they did have some issues with fish unexpectedly during sealab ii. they had a shark cages built around, just case in the sharks showed up and there was this data they could run behind and hi. that was the kind of forward thinking they were doing, trying

to imagine what kind of problems they might have in these ocean environments. sealab ii i should mention that dark water took place just off the coast of san diego here in 1965, and it can't their intentionally because the conditions were more dark and dire and cold. the first experiment was in bermuda where the water was reasonably warm, reasonably clear. they did want to start off and the most difficult circumstances so it took sealab ii off the coast of san diego were it was much colder and there were, it was a more hostile environment. including the cameo by fish that wound up giving our friend scott carpenter whitelisting, and i guess i don't want to give that away because it's in the book. but you never know what you will find out there in the ocean. is a dynamic environment and that's one of the things that makes it different from space. once you are out of stage you can be pretty sure what's going on, but anytime you leave an

osha for habitat, it's anybody's guess what's going to swim by or what's going to happen to another aspect. >> when the sealab, when your gathering the data for research, were you giving it all to the navy, or was it public domain? >> was i getting it all to the navy? >> yes, were you giving it all or primarily for the navy? >> now, the navy has nothing to do with it. i mean, the navy, i talked to a few times, i started to get some documentation or information. i had to freedom of information act -- three freedom of information act requests behind this thing. it was kind of a bureaucratic communication that way but my information all came from things like the lost reel to reel tapes. the interviews.

and as i say, i had help from somebody at the library of congress to scour the archives to see what is the sealab archives are as far as anyone could tell there wasn't one. so what i have to go on as a journalist i was kind of able to dig up. >> it must have led you in the wrong direction because from your research, from their research at sealab, did they send information directly to the navy? wasn't secured kind of information on that research? >> yes. so yeah, the first couple of sealab's were run by the office of naval research so they were producing reports and they were learning everything that the was to learn from the project to enhance the own diving capabilities, which they did in the navy through sealab. and as i said at the end, some

of the scientific work that was going on, they have civilian scientist, divers from scripps institute of ocean all be involved in sealab ii to get them on board and see what kinds of experiments in things they could do, working from the lab that they couldn't do as conventional divers. but all of this was shared information with the navy, and so they were learning very much. >> so, this story seems to have a lot of elements for a great film. has anybody expressed any interest in the movie rights? >> interest in the movie rights, no, not that i know of. although it james cameron is in the audience anywhere here, no. it's funny you ask because, you know, there's obviously a lot of nonfiction books concerning the

filter they would be some underwater challenges with is what i think of although certainly people see movies like the abyss, these kind of challenges have been overcome. and what's interesting to me in the kind of journalistic or created since is i think in some ways, i hate to say a better movie could be made out of this than the book but you would have created like this making a movie in a way that i didn't riding this book. so that when you have a couple of great characters like george and walt who i described were pretty different characters, we learned a fair amount of george come and you put them in some of the situations that they were in. and are able to create dialogs and bring other characters into that situation, you have quite a great setup for a movie, i think. so bring them on. and in all seriousness, you know, for me a big part of this

exercise has been getting the story of sealab out. this somehow got lost on the historical radar so anything that brings, like the book or what we're doing right here, that brings more attention, understanding to it i think is a good thing. so just in that respect a major motion picture would be welcomed. and quite good i think, too. >> first off i want to say that i'm about 50 pages into the book. it was very intricately reported. very interesting story. i especially like the story about hurting the goats around the navy bases. but i was curious to know, how did you get interested in doing this? >> how do they get interested in doing the book? >> the divers and this whole subject. >> did you miss my spiel at the bikini? >> i'm sorry. i did walk in a little. >> i told you i get asked that question a lot. we will have to for the benefit

of those were here refer you to the beginning of the tape. but the short story was, the journalistic of my yossi was the custom reporting i was doing in santa barbara just up the coast. one thing led to another and that was sealab. and the fact that there was no real record or book of what this is all about, then that became my job to tell the. i didn't mention earlier but i got a publisher interested in a contract to do it, and i went back to my desk and went about my journalistic work, as i've done for years before. it's a little bit lonelier. >> you described early on this sensation when your breathing in those circumstances, what it's like. could you go into more detail what it feels like to be

gathered? >> in the breathing peanut butter? that was a little bit of hyperbole on that divers card. that's not really quite the experience at these depths, but as i describe in the book because those questions that george ask him how deep could a diver go, how long could a diver stay down, the kind of research that he did can take it in some other laboratories in england and in france and in the united states, particularly at duke university where they had a big hyperbaric facility and they were back in chambers. there were still some government funding and they're still trying to figure out how long could a diver stay down, how deep could a diver go. and it turned out, and i described, i sort of follow that question in the book because as i said it seemed like isn't this something we know, how high amount everest is and what the deepest sound is? it seems like it's a given, it's not. but what you find is because gas

has become more dense and significant doubts under greater pressure, it does feel in the divers describe the sensation like they're breeding a liquid almost. that is so thick that they have to mouse brief very deliberately to get the gases in and out and so that makes me uncomfortable because when you are eating your not really breathing. and so that was kind of the issues that came up against, when they get to depths, let's say beyond 1500 feet, over some experiments over 2000 feet of depth. and in a commercial oilfield now, i think 1000-foot dives are still, they still haven't and they have happen, and they detail one of them in the book. there's a whole chapter devoted to the commercial but experience to give you a sense of kind of who these unsung heroes are that do this rather difficult work.

but yeah, that sensation he was describing was a little hyperbole to what effect does happen when your breathing these gases at extreme depths. doesn't sound too fun. >> last question. i hope it's a really good one. how about another question about movie rights, shall we? i'm just saying. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> [inaudible] >> yes. the work on the brooklyn bridge was using essentially diving techniques that have been developed over the ages. in the case of the brooklyn bridge you have people, not

significant gaps but they're working under pressure to keep the mud and water away from them so they're working in these kind of environments like muddy cocoons or something. [inaudible] >> right. they go down any chamber and create a dry space to work and. it's pressurized to keep the mud and water at bay. so they were basically doing the diving decompression techniques of the day at that time. sometimes with some interest because it wasn't always the most exact science but in a lot of ways diving is still not an exact science because all bodies are different and the response differently, and you find that in the book as well. though so hard and fast rules about what works and what doesn't work. i touched on that in the book on little bit, in the section that kind of brings the history of diving. >> thank you all very much.

thank our guest. [applause] >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streamed live online for 40 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> tonight in prime time. the air of prohibition can post world war ii america as well ash the presidential election of 1948. it the >> a week the convention there is this crazy quilt, coalition f of democrats, southern segregationist like richard russell, strom thurmond

provision was a presidential candidate, he is willing to step aside. big city bosses like boss take y jersey or jake of chicago, liberals like hubert humphrey. members of the rows of family they all go, we want i'd. but ike draws back again, crashes the whole thing. there's another explanation of why truman is able to pull this there i off, even the people are so wary of him. and i can't repeat his exacttr words, but when he hears the sow word of the truman, or the eisenhower collapsing before the convention, he says, look, youe tell those people thati any blas who sits behind his desk can get renominated. and that's a large part of it.y it's very hard to dump a sitting president in the nominating process. >> watch booktv's entire three-hour interview with

estoria david pietrusza tonight at eight eastern here on c-spa c-span2. >> what i'm going to do tonight is little talked about how pass losing presidential campaigns have shaped the 2012 election. maybe do a little speculation on the 2012 election might in the future. and i'm going to begin, talk about 20 minutes and open it up to questions. i'm going to begin what i think is a pretty bold addiction which is on november 6, 2012, absolutely and definitely be a winner and a loser. but the bold prediction is this, the things we meant no for several decades who won because sometimes it's not clear. winning, sometimes the winner has almost no impact on american history. becomes -- sometimes the losing candidate has a tremendous impact and change the political dynamic a whole bunch of

different ways. before go into that how that works, let me tell you why i wrote the book. i was an unsuccessful political candidate myself. i ran for congress in 1998. i lost. you sit there and you say wow, that was tough. my family and my friends and complete strangers, time and money, and then i let them down, or at least the voters let me down. the voters have spoken, and so you sort of think that way and it's a little bit like barry goldwater. when he lost in 1964 east said i still believe america is still a great country. and so you worry about that are but you think about, do i make a difference can have an impact?

the incumbent republican stole a few of my ideas so i feel like i moved the ball forward a little bit. and losers are very important. a couple reasons. first of all common losers, particularly when it is in a certain way is what makes democracy work. been often losing campaigns are far more dynamic and far more prophetic than the winning campaign. how do they make democracy work? you may have noticed on election night that losers always get to speak first. notice how they always, they declare they think the winner is and then we wait for the guys did -- declared the loser to come out to speak. the one who won cannot speak until the loser does. even though we think we know the votes, the fact is an election isn't over when the winner declares victory. the election is only over when the loser concedes defeat. at the loser says, i didn't

lose. i can't allow this, he's a wacko. you can imagine what might happen. we see what happens with the around the world all the time. a lot of countries people don't abide by election will. we see chaos, riots, civil war. 2008 with a pretty tense presidential campaign, very emotional campaign. between the first african-american president, and john mccain. that same year, kenny had an election for the losers didn't like the results. so after all the violence was done, a quarter million people were dead. it was a riot in india. it was deft in mongolia, siberia. you say those are all for world. 2007 when sarkozy was elected president in france, they have so many riots, they have 600 cases of arson, 6-under people arrested.

so we're fortunate in the united states we don't have violence about a presidential election. a lot of that is due to their behavior. they come out and they say they're disappointed but i accept the results. our country should rally around the winner and move forward. if you're on the losing end, if you refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the winner, how can anything -- you have gridlock, and chaos. i did one of the reasons i wrote the book, one of the messages in the book is that i do worry that we're getting to a point so much polarization that we will lose this wonderful tradition. especially over the last several presidents. people are questioning the legitimacy of the winner. that's a very dangerous thing to this question. we think we're a very strong democracy but we are still relatively young. there's no country as diverse as the united states. so many different ethnic groups, regional differences.

and so actually believe our democracy is fairly fragile. it's important we try to keep these unified and keep the understand that the government may not -- is a legitimate government. we'll come back the next election. if we ever lose that, i deeply we will see terrible, terrible problems in our elections. i mentioned the other way that sometimes losers have more impact than winners. it's often the losers are the ones -- the winners are stuck in a policies of past. i would argue that every major program in our political system, it takes a while for something to do. another way to bring in changes can they bring in more participants. they bring different types of

folks that maybe have not participated in the political process before. they bring you new folks. change the coalition, how the parties are organized. and the reason they do that i think him a couple. first of all, most of the losers sort of know they're probably going to lose. they won't admit that but political polling is a very sophisticated thing and you always wanted to be 1948 like harry truman comes from behind. so losing campaigns sometimes has to be very bold to talk about issues when they bring on a running mate. for example, walter mondale picked jared in carrara. -- geraldine carrara.

>> the other thing is that if you want, you think gee, i have a winning message. i've done really well. i don't need to change anything. but the loser lost. you have to say what did we do wrong? what do we do better next time? so think of it as remodeling your house. you've got to knock down some walls. think about what you want to do and then rebuild. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at otb.org. -- booktv.org. >> richard john talked to booktv about the history of the telegraph and telephone in the u.s. the interview was recorded in the king's college room at columbia university's low

library. his half-hour interview is part of booktv's college series. >> you are watching the tv on c-span2. on a regular basis, we go to universities to talk to professors who are also authors. right now we are at columbia university in new york city, and we are joined by professor richard john who's the author of this book, "network nation: inventing american telecommunications." so, professor john, samuel morse invented the telegraph, yes or no? >> no spent why are we taught that as school children? >> well, we love tales of heroic inventors. and it turns out one reason of those fails is because they fit the needs of the voters who are actually developing the networks that would prove so enormous important in 19th century american fumigation, and the

communications today. so yes, samuel morse was a gifted inventor who had the good fortune to have a college classmate who became patent commissioner who granted him an extremely broad patent right that enabled him to try to monopolize the telegraph business. he didn't succeed, but that was at least the basis for the claims that have swirled around him. claims that surprisingly enough were then picked up by his archrival, the second generation telegraph motor, the western union, to use those claims in or to buttress their own legitimacy as a corporation. so it's quite a tangled story. but now, samuel morse did not invent the telegraph. alexander graham bell did not invent the telephone. >> how did alexander graham bell not into the telephone. >> well, alexander graham bell was a number of very talented individuals in the 1870s who

became part of a competitive struggle involving western union, which was then the leading dominant telegraph network provider, and jay gould was a promoter who had behind him a very small but very effective for his purposes telegraph company. and so you have to companies that are competing with each other for inventions that they can turn into patent rights they can use a sort of chips and a competitive struggle. and bell was part of that. he wanted to invent the telephone but his primary backer, who was to become his father-in-law, wanted him to develop what we now call a broadband telegraph. and the fact it was only we need to develop such a device that is backer committed him to go on into his research on the telephone. at the telephone patent than not part of a bundle and became a part of american bell which

eventually became at&t, we might not have heard of alexander graham bell. so inventors operating in a very distinctive political economy in which their own vanity is only part of the story and, indeed, a relatively small part of the story. >> so how would you compare samuel morse or alexander graham bell to a steve jobs or a bill gates? >> well, they are very different. morse was an unsuccessful entrepreneur. bell did not wish to be an entrepreneur. gates and jobs are very successful entrepreneurs. and in that, someways morse is the most revealing, he's the most revealing contrast because he very much wanted to rely on the last generations template for how to organize a business, to rely on the federal government. he wanted to sell his past to the federal government and basically get out of the way. when that failed he tried to

license his telegraph patents very selectively, but this proved impossible. he did not have, the federal government proved unable to provide him with the kind of protection he needed in order to pursue his business. in the case of gates, he famously had a very great good fortune to stumble upon the telephone -- computer business, software business just when ibm was looking for a developer. ibm gave him the kind of running room that the federal government didn't give morse. >> so, are you saying telecommunications in the u.s. has been regulated since day one? was the telegraph highly regulated? >> communications networks have always been highly regulated. they've been regulated in different ways. in the case of the telegraph, the original idea was a telegraph to be coordinated like

the post office. morse tried for several years but failed to patent rights to congress and only when congress refused to go on and develop his own pretty unsuccessful network of telegraph companies. in the case of the telephone, it developed in a very different -- the rules and again matter and their different. in the case of the telephone, the rules of the game mandated that you have to establish a municipal franchise company, and by doing so you are obliged to follow all kinds of regulations right from the start, were as the successful telegraph company, the second generation, not morse but the generation that followed morse, they operated with a minimum rules but there were still rules. there always have been rules and there always will be rules. it's just too important a sector and its too bound up with all kinds of property rights.

that's the case in the past and that's the case in the present. that's one of the main themes in the book is the political structures within which communication networks involved shape the business strategies of the promoters who were developing those networks, structured shapes strategy. >> how did the internet fit today into that regulation structure? >> well, contrary to the assumptions that show up in popular books, the internet was not invented in anybody's garage, and neither was the world wide web. the internet as a federal government cold war party. what's remarkable about the internet really when you think about it was that no corporation would've taken it on. and, indeed, it really was only possible in a relatively short period of time when you're trying to become eyes on scarce computer processing space. so you have cheaper long distance telephone lines than

have computer space and you need this computer processing space because you're trying to compute missile fires. so that's was -- that was the impetus that led these cold war scientist to try to put together this remarkable network that really didn't have commercial rationale, and that's really part of the wonder of it is that it was not developed with a particular business model in mind. so we've been having, since the 1990s, to develop successfully these models, which has been part of -- so yes, having regulated from the beginning, remains highly regulated today. even the idea of creating a level playing field is a particular set of regulatory reasons. and i think it's important that not only those of us to care about the history of communicate and networks, but those of us who care about the future recognize that the relative, through the relevant issues is not between regulation and no

regulation. different kinds of regulations and different kinds of regulations promote different kinds of innovation. that's really part of the story of network nation. >> who founded western union? >> western union as its name implies was sort of a combine a small telegraph lines that were in, well, the midwest between new york, ohio, michigan. and if there was to be one hero, one central figure it would be a promoter from upstate new york. and what he did, he did two things. the first thing he did was that is able to convince a number of merchants and other capitalists in rochester, new york, to invest in what has been, at the time looked like a failed venture. that is to say, telegraph corporations. because of the way the laws were set up there were telegraph corporations, almost of them were making money. so he convinces his rochester,

new york, buddies, the men who helped him, he was a poor boy, he says i've got a great idea. they are very skeptical, but he convinces them to put a lot of money into the corporation that becomes known as western union, which he will then, he will use that capital to kind of buyout a number of companies. the second key innovation, besides getting together a certain amount of capital, and that's all the capital he needed to raise, at one point in time. the other key innovation was that he figured out a way to get some of the benefits of monopoly in a political economy in which state government for encouraging the establishment of lots and lots of telegraph. and what he did was he established exclusive right-of-way contracts with individual railroads. so you can get an exclusive contract, say between detroit and chicago, along a particular

railroad line, you are able to maintain that line at a much cheaper cost than your arrival having to use roads or having to just bushwhack the open country. and by establishing those exclusive right-of-way, railroads got very cheap telegraph service. telegraph companies have the rights of way. by establishing those arrangements, unusual contractual arrangements which the courts were reluctant to challenge, and congress was reluctant to challenge, by doing that he was able to get around the limitations that state lawmakers have place on telegraph companies to the anti-monopoly laws. and those laws have been enacted as a response to morse. so you morse who fails, the state anti-monopoly laws, did he succeed by using the railroads to create the kind of monopolies --

>> are there any comparisons today for rise in an at&t and broadband and cell towers, et cetera? >> here's the comparison that really gets me. in 1996 congress enacted a law, open up competition. in local telecommunications have been opened up in regional areas. the idea, we will have lots of different cable service, lots of different operating company's. in fact, we got almost precisely the opposite. we ended up with two dominant telecommunication firms, att which was sec, if you go back to corporate genealogy was the chicago telephone company, second biggest inward, and, and you have verizon which was nymex which was the biggest telephone operating cover in the world. this is precisely what happened in the late 1870s. congress was intent upon

preventing western union from dominating telegraph lines. so it connects to laws. open up the market to encourage competition. and it does precisely the opposite. you get an outcome that is astonished and enraged the business committee. which was the rise of jake gold, takes over western union. that inspired a kind of horror and disgust in the part of the business community that will be hard to vision today, not murdoch, not gates, no business leader was asked reviled as james gould was in 1881 when he takes over western union. the irony is he takes it over as an anti-monopolist. he was claiming that he was not rely on special privilege but he was simply going to use his own commercial, and he does it in a way that it can be sets off alarm bells. because he is the most notorious

financial buccaneer of the age. a fellow who made his name by speculating in gold and railroad, who now is in control of western union. he was also able, he was feared and i think was considered that the critics were right to actually plant stories. so there's this marvelous cartoon of jay gould around 1887 in which he says i never speculate. why does jay gould never speculate? because he controlled western union. because he controls newspapers. because he has a lot in "the associated press." in fact, he didn't. they portrayed him sitting inside a stock ticker, inside a jar. that's the machine that generates these tapes for stock prices.

we remember the ticker tape parades. then you look very closely at the cartoon and you see that jay gould is actually writing the stock prices. he doesn't need to speculate because he can dominate. that's the kind of power you could get in the 1880s by take advantage of anti-monopoly laws. the power of murdoch, the power of gould, the power of apple. but it really wasn't that concerned in the 1880s were more focused because of the ability of one individual to control both congress and the content itself. and if there's a lesson we learn from that's the kind that lawmakers have historically frowned upon. i think you can take that as a

lesson out of a historical study. not writing the book, also pronouncements or with advice to lawmakers today, but we do have a long tradition of encouraging the segmentation of documentation networks. that has been a remarkably effective regulatory strategy. it's made the united states for much of the 20 century and the world in the provisioning of the telecommunication services. >> one of the kinds concerns today is the issue of privacy. was that an issue in 1800? >> it certainly was. you really need to go back before the electric telegraph. the post office which was really an extremely important precursor, and it was a template that was in sammy morris' mind, how to set up a communication network. the post office under federal law proscribed anyone, other

than a very specific well-defined group, from opening any letters. very concept is closely linked with this post a policy. the term privacy. and the idea that there's something of a right to do that the government does not have a right to interfere with. now, what happens to the concept of privacy with the coming of the electric telegraph? the technology is very different. in fact, if you want to send a message by telegram, you have to prevent the telegraph operator to write out or to send, to transcribe, send your message. so the operator knows what's in a message. or you can send a by code. that's what are the solutions. but then what if you are a government official and you're concerned about content of messages? well, you have these dragnet

subpoenas in the 1860s, even in 1870s where congress calls the thousands, tens of thousands of telegraph's and from the present-day point of view, and the point if you, it's rather extraordinary and vision of privacy. and led to really the end of the career of the presidential career of children. somebody telegrams were revealed were quite interesting to wonder the interesting things about this tour is there was the outrage from congress about these dragnet subpoenas. who were concerned what the merchants were concerned and western union was concerned. the corporation was actually moving these messages. of course, the telegraph in his cushy was dominated by commercial providers. so you get western union ticking private investors and you get western union setting the

standards for the telegraph should be the same as the standards in the post office. so the government is not necessarily the best guardian of privacy, of citizens. think of the lessons we can take from the history of the 1870s and 1880s. >> samuel morse die rich from his inventions speak with samuel morse died rich because samuel morse, his business manager had the good sense to invest in western union. and that's what save samuel morse, even the western union was the firm that was in effect the great rival to samuel morse. the iron -- the irony, western union saw the valley of samuel morse as sort of a poster child for the new technology. there behind the statute of sammy morris. still stands. one of the first statutes ever erected to a living american.

morse was still alive. so by linking him to western union, they create for themselves, this heroic mythology, really completely false to the history but it is one that helps to associate corporation which had another wrote regard at the time, with a heroic adventure who had high regard and who still does today. so yes, by investing in western union, morse died rich, as did cornell who uses the money that he gets from investing in western union to found a great university, cornell university. one of the ivy league schools, the beneficiary of telegraph in 1870. >> where did alexander graham bell go in his career? >> he had a fascinating career. he had no interest in business whatsoever. he also became sort of a poster child for bell.

when bell engineers figure out how to send a transcontinental voicesignal, which is quite a remarkable achievement. [inaudible] >> a different fellow. they put them at each end of the line as if the bell publicists are saying, american public, if you want an inventor, a heroic inventor, we will give you one. will give you bell and watson. actually had nothing to do with the transcontinental telephone. bell could have had a very fine group of engineers. they didn't want to do that. they didn't want to emphasize the individual spirit they want to emphasize the team. so what did bill to between 1879 when he becomes a rich man, when they have an agreement between

western union and bell, a 1950s? he becomes an independent inventor. he becomes evolves in airplanes. he's involving various electrical -- is great passion was, that's what he was interested in telephone. he was trying to enable, figure out a device for the deaf to hear. and it really became and remained a passion. so he is a pure inventor who really has distinguished independent legacy. with morse, he was a very talented man but, of course, he was a painter but as a painter, a rogue landscapes. and portraits. he preferred but there wasn't much money. and that is why he got into the telegraph business. he was very frustrated losing his commission. they have different careers,

different personalities but the book, "network nation" is there but it's about the promoters, the entrepreneurs, finances, the lawmakers that invention is not innovation. innovation is more proper subject for this story. >> could be argued that without jay gould, what would our communication networks be like right now? >> yes. jay gould is a remarkably respective entrepreneur who took advantage of the rules of the game. the telegraph network a command in 1880s was extraordinarily gone the end of a. i think there's a lesson there for us. if you have the roles of the game, if rosa became encourage competition, then you can have a burst of innovation. you have a hot us. jay gould, western union, for

innovation, the company. broadband telegram, telephone, phonograph and electric power. but those innovations for the most part do not renown to the benefit of the promoters of executives from telegraph. that is so different from the case of the telephone. telephone highly regulated from the start. out of the highly regulated environment, emerge as bell labs which is a crown jewel. yo national interest a resource of the twin century, arguably the most important. highly regulated business pics of regulation and innovation, the competition or anti-monopoly gave you a much narrower -- businesses have a more narrowly focused mandate, certain innovations but you don't have the accusative information that

would make telephone system in the 20 century the in the of the world and, of course, still to this day a backbone of the internet. >> thomas edison figure into your book is? >> of course. thomas edison was one of those inventors who was competing with dell in the 1870s to invent something that could become patented that could be sold either to jay gould or two western union, all of thomas edison's early patents without exception, the money he used to build his menlo park laboratory came out of the telegraph. he was a telegraph inventor before he became an electric -- electrical inventor. that's not controversial, but how the rules of the game at the 1870s encouraged individuals like edison who was trying to figure out how to make a living as an inventor, provides

circumstances in which he can, in fact, make a great deal of money, sold a quadruple x. to western union. and with that money, he saw two north western union and to gould your nice work if you can get a. and with the money he got for that, he then built his laboratories and, of course, which has become so extraordinarily important. >> do we have the right interview regulatory framework today to encourage innovation? >> well, i don't do the future. and i guess i have to lessons from the history. one is that regulation is inevitable. and if regulation to promote the kind of universal access in which large numbers of people could get access with relatively equal terms, worked very well. that was the case in a telephone and not the telegraph. as late as 1890, the president of western union who would tell

anyone who would listen if you want to send a message over long distance, use the post office. we are not for you. telegraph was not intended to be a mass media for the entire population. it was a specialty meeting for exclusive clientele. the telephone started out that way but as result of regulatory pressure, including the very real threat of extortion on the part of the corrupt city officials, the business strategy changes and they embrace, universal service, which by about 1907, creates the presumption that anyone living in a big city, or small town, has the right to make a local telephone call at a very reasonable cost. but that was an extraordinary innovation. that's one of the magnificent things. you have regulation both kind of even playing field, promote access. that can create sort of a

cauldron of innovation back in the benefits that go down to the entire population. there's a second lesson. and that lesson is, that in the american tradition we have a very effective long-standing presumption that one communication should not dominate another. that is to say, newspapers did not get control of the post office. the post office to get to control the telegraph. the telegraph does not control the telephone. telephone does not take control of rader. radio does not take control of television. now that could be determined on the basis of technological economic considerations alone. we've made a series of decisions, very wise, to sort of let communication media developing their own way, encourage a rivalry. to distinguish between, for exam t