Hacking weapons, putting world in danger. So explain to me, please, who did what to whom and what does it mean. David charlie, this story really goes back to august of 2016. A month you may remember we were all thinking about another hack. It was really when we discovered the depths of the russian hacking into the Democratic National committee and the release of emails, and so forth. It was just the moment when the russia hack was beginning to gather steam. That same month, this group called the shadow brokers, who we didnt really understand then and dont really understand 15 months later, began publishing what looked like very obscure computer code that they advertised as coming out of the deepest depths of the nsa, a group called the tailored access Operations Unit. This is sort of the special forces of the nsa. The group that designs american attacks to get into foreign computer systems. The attack against iran to cripple their centrifuges. That was at least party a t. A. O. Operation. The attacks you and i have him discussed before against north koreas missile program. That was partly a t. A. O. Operation. The attacks against the islamic state. This is the most Critical Group of Cyber Warriors that we have, and it looked like they were beginning to hemorrhage many of their own tools. It probably needed the help of an insider, maybe several, and part of what we discovered as we dug deeper into this subject was that inside the nsa, they think there may still be insiders who are a part of this. They also suspect that it is the russians who are playing the central role directly or indirectly in distributing this material in public to cause precisely the kind of chaos that was involved here. What we found also interesting about this is that these weapons as weese lost weapons, we have reported before, were wrapped up in weapons that the north koreans and the russians later designed and shot out against allies or partners. So, the wannacry attack that crippled the British Health system was a north koreandesigned weapon that made use of what was stolen from the nsa. And the attack on ukraine over the summer was also based on a set of weapons that were stolen from the nsa. Charlie, it is a little like losing a tomahawk missile and then having parts of it shot back at an ally. Charlie so, what do they think who do they the shadow brokers they are . David they think they are a Hacking Group that may be loosely affiliated with the russians, or at least has some russian money. Charlie ok, i got that. David they speak at least when they write their ransom demands and so forth, they use this sort of broken english that seems to be an effort to cloak who they are. And yet at the same time, they seem to have a deep familiarity with the american system. There are a lot of cultural references and political references in their demands that make it clear that if they are not americans, then they know a lot about america. Charlie who is Jake Williams . David hes a former t. A. O. Operator who my colleague scott shane found, and who told scott the after he had left tailored access Operations Unit had written some about shadow brokers on a company blog, a company that he helped found, and suddenly shadow brokers were coming after him come out in him as a former member of the t. A. O. , accurately, so they had insider knowledge there. And then he found himself looking at code that had references in it that clearly indicated that they knew about operations that he worked on. So they were in pretty deep. He speaks on the record for this piece. Charlie yeah, in fact, he says whoever wrote this talking about hacking him either was a wellplaced insider or had stolen a lot of operational data. Heres what some of the commentary, including the New York Times in your piece, says today this was much worse than snowden. Not only did they take the code words, they took the code. David thats right. And that is the essence of this. When snowden released his data, it was incredibly damaging, but it was code words and descriptions of operations, whether it was breaking into the chinese Leadership Communications system or whether it was breaking into Angela Merkels cell phone. This actually releases the real code that is used which tells you how much the nsa had to go back and rip up and start again. In the world of cyber, you often have to rip up code and start again because your targets shift and they change. What works against north Korean Missile last year may not work against it this year because the designs of the missiles have changed. But in this case, they lost many , and theynature codes even lost some of the manuals of how to use them, because those were published as well. Charlie when you described this as damaging to the world, what does that mean . David if you are relying, charlie, on the United States and its allies to be able to conduct the kind of Cyber Operations that we think might keep the peace, whether it is disabling north Korean Missile tests or going after a country trying to get a Nuclear Weapon , or trying to get inside russia then you have to believe that this is incredibly damaging to the United States. But it also raises a much deeper question. We have focused a huge amount of effort in the past decade to building up american cyber offensive capabilities and we have done that with considerable success. I think it is fair to say that the United States is probably the best in the world right now although the lead may not be a very long 1 at using Cyber Weapons in incredibly subtle way for both destruction and for espionage. We havent done as well is protect what we have got. And this explains to you white y it is that in the cyber world it is entirely possible you can lose your lead overnight for the same reasons that General Electric or westinghouse could lose an Industrial Design overnight if it is stolen out of their systems. Charlie is there some worry of losing our lead . David there was worry of losing our lead even without cyber brokers. It is relatively cheap to start up. No uranium or plutonium needed in this case. You just needs to very smart talent and inability to figure out how to roam around the networks of the world and how to crack into the ones that are blocked to you. That takes a lot of work, time and attention. It is not especially expensive. The northis that koreans proved pretty good at this. They did the sony attack. They did that wannacry attack. They got millions out of the bangladesh centralbank. If it were not for typographical error, they wouldve gotten a billion. If north korea can do it, you have to think a lot of other places can do it. The iranians are big players. Eastern European Countries have a lot of talent in this territory as well. So this is, as we have talked about before, the new area in which countries compete and conflict without starting a war so big or at least hope there is retaliation. But now the states are rising with every single year. The if russia is playing in election space, the electric power space, and now the nsa space, it is becoming an area of superpower as well. Charlie there are also reports that shadow brokers are selling it. David they are trying to sell it. Interestingly they had to put on a fire sale the other day where they were cutting their prices. This might be where people are discovering some data is outdated or if they pay their money, they wonder if they get the best stuff that they have. But that is an element of ransomware. People take a look at this and try to sell it. It is also a way to divert attention. If someone is trying to sell something, you may think they are in it for financial gain when in fact that maybe to throw investigators off the scent. Charlie before i leave you, think for a moment about the progress or lack of progress the president might have made in his trip to asia, the countries he met with, especially especially xi jinping where he was trapped treated rather well. Did he gain anything in the effort to stop north korea . David i dont think he gained much. We will have to wait until we care what took place in the actual conversations. I think the trip started well and went downhill over some period of time. , he had the strongest relationship with Prime Minister abe, maybe the strongest he has in the world. I think he gave a very solid speech in front of the south korean parliament. It was a speech that you could have imagined george bush or barack obama giving about human rights abuses in north korea and about the threat of their nuclear program. It was very much within the tradition of american president s. Then when he got to china, it me that despite all the pomp and circumstance of how he was received, that he actually got the chinese to do anything that would truly change the trajectory of what the north koreans are doing. And i am not sure that is within the chinese power. Meanwhile, the other countries he was meeting got together and approved the transpacific partnership. Going ahead without us. I thought we looked pretty isolated. By the end of the trip he was in the philippines, with the philippine leader who is responsible we believe for thousands of extrajudicial killings in his effort to run out the drug trade. That has been used for many other purposes. And there was no public discussion of the human rights implications of this, even though he was sitting in the palace of a major american ally. Charlie thank you, david. David thank you, charlie. Charlie back in a moment. Stay with us. Charlie im pleased to have bob costa here. Five women, as you know, have accused alabama senatorial candidate roy moore of sexual assault. In a press conference this morning, senate majoroity leader Mitch Mcconnell said moore should step aside from the race. Negotiations on tax reform earlier today. President trump will return from his five country tour of asia limited this week and over the weekend he spoke proudly of russian president vladimir putin. Trump said he believed putin when he said he absolutely did not meddle in the 2016 election. We turn to robert costa now. It is always great to have you here in the studio. Welcome. Robert great to be with you. Charlie we will talk about all of that but lets begin with the Senate Candidate from alabama, roy moore. Where does that stand . Robert what a headache for the republican party. They are not sure what to do. You have roy moore with five women coming out with accusations. A new one, monday, spoke with her and then Beverly Young in alabama made accusations about roy moore, but he is defiant in the senate race. He doesnt want to leave. They are contemplating what to do. Can you have a writein candidate . Can you might not even seat mo ore if he wins . They are not sure what to do. He has the base with him in alabama. Charlie could he win . Robert he certainly could win. Charlie even with all this . Robert this is a state won overwhelmingly by donald trump last year. The democrat is inching up in racells, the the polls, making the race competitive, but this is still a deep red state. I was talking to people inside the white house and they say it is difficult to make a decision they are waiting for the president to take a firm stance. Charlie what do you consider the president doing in this tour of asia . Robert you talk about the chapters of this trip, that is how they think about it. Before tweets and after tweets. Before tweets they felt good. They felt he was on message. Charlie a good start in japan. Robert he built a relationship with abe. They had a cozy relationship, the articulated things on north korea and trade it in step two far outside the line they agreed to. They thought it was going swimmingly. Then the president when he was in vietnam decisive start tweeting and chilling his wrath about a variety of different issues, especially about russia. It is in a challenge for them, to say the least. Charlie exactly what happened in the conversation with putin . I have looked at it a number of times. What was he saying . Was he saying i believe putin believes what he says or was he saying at first glance, i believe what putin is saying . Robert he is saying both. Hes saying i believe what putin is saying more than anything. It is serious because he made a statement later saying he now access the intelligence communitys conclusion. But the context matters. Because the president believes the Russian Investigation was about the election last year, about nullifying the election. Whenever you make statements about putin whenever he makes statements about putin, it is the context in the broader conversation about the battle he is facing against russia. He does have a lot of faith in mike pompeo. Based on my reporting, there is no bigger confidant in this administration than the director of the cia mike pompeo. He gives him the daily brief come unusual for the cia director to do that. He is someone who channels the base of President Trump. He has been floated as a potential successor to rex tillerson. Because pompeo, the president has walked back, but that does not mean the president is somehow happy now with the intelligence community. He Still Believes as steve bannon would whisper to him, that there is charlie tax reform what is going to happen . Robert the senate and house has to figure out how to pass it. It has been ruptured by the roy moo controversyre roy moore controversey. Should immediately come down to 20 or be extended . Charlie senate suggests maybe they wait until extended . The senate is suggesting maybe wait until 2019. Robert this is a mainstream republican congress. They are not naturally populace. At the end of the day most of them privately, they want to make sure the Corporate Tax cut happens because that is important for their donors and the party. They think it is progrowth. Charlie is it likely will get a tax bill before the first of the year . Robert if they dont it is a political disaster. People close to ryan and mcconnell say they will get it done. The senate and house are not close at all. They are adamant it will get done. I am not sure in the course of my reporting. I am hearing a lot of confidence rather than fact when it comes to will it happen. They still have to close the gaps. You have kevin brady come of the ways and Means Committee chairman. He wants to control it. The Senate FinancialCommittee Chairman wants to hold it. Than President Trump start tweeting about other things which is a major hurdle for both chambers. They have not had a unified front. Charlie they cannot go to the country because of what their promises have been without having tax reform, especially since they did not get the repeal obamacare. Robert they want to make sure they have text reform. Charlie, listen to the whispers on capitol hill. Mitch mcconnell and his allies talklready started to about how much progress he has made on judicial nominations. Not just new gorsuch this year but throughout different lower courts, how much Progress Senate republicans have made in nominations because they need to have a plan b. Charlie they have the legislation so therefore their plan is to say we have changed the judiciary. Robert exactly. If they dont come to a plan on taxes they could run on 2018 on grievance plus suburban voters are starting to turn. Doesnt mean they have flipped. These are states that went to president. They didnt go for President Trump. In northern virginia, the suburbs of pennsylvania and suburbs of new york, they are maybe saying we have had enough of President Trump. Washington is telling me every day, is it because of president s conduct and temperament or his policies . Charlie great to have you here. Washington key political reporter. It has been a banner year for the washington post. We will be right back. Stay with us. Is here. Chris ware s a cartoonist characterized by ambitious scope. There is no writer alive whose work i love more than chris. Heres a look at his work. Part of comics as a medium is based around that idea of drawing spaces in moving through memory spaces and seeing what happens when you draw on a page. I try to allow that the structure the stories i write. The way chris thinks and what he is obsessed by does have to do with memory and loss as if each panel was kind of like a memory palace where you store a i think that is part of what the coming in artist is, getting back in touch with a sense of experience and wonder you have as a kid. I grew up in a middleclass neighborhood. I went to a private school with very small classes, so i had the unfortunate experience of not being able to reinvent myself every year. Connectst like, i would the next year and they would be like, there he is again. I was the nerd. I started drawing as a way of controlling a thing and disappearing into another reality. When you are drawing something, you are engaged in a way that sort of shutdown language and allows you to see reality as it is. I will be drawing a character sometimes and i will have to my hair by will be ignoring that. Act or if im not paying attention to exercise, the character will get fatter. It is pretty weird. , he has so much that he wants to do visually that it is like the pages are not big enough. There is a series of pages in one of his books where there is withoutstanding there clothing and you turn the page and she is clothing and that is just the center of the page. All around it, there are other things happening. Just the colors of the craftsmanship, just so beautiful. There are some blues, blues grays, tones. It is a language. You cant beat and color for me. You can speak in color i know there is a certain character that have to be a certain color. The same thing is happening where i am drawing the page. It will connect to something red down here. If i want that to be highlighted, i might make things more blue ends the blue will make a secondary story. There is a tremendous amount of melancholy in the story. Chris defends that. This is a whole part of living, which you just feel that way. There are two kinds of loneliness. The loneliness of being alone in the loneliness of being with another person. That is kind of what life is. Counteren have to people who say christopher is not depressing. What is interesting about the work is while the stories and sad, thee often very images are just bursting with life and color and expressiveness. The book is about something he doesnt see in the world in a beautiful way. Designed itelf, i to be as beautiful and colorful so i can contradict the characters and say, no, that is not actually true. The world is this way if you Pay Attention to it. His work is not just an interesting set of graphics. One can also see they have an incredibly strong emotional element. The stories jump forward and backward in time, spanned generations, come from the most internal feelings to wide shots of the city. There are dreamscapes of robots and overweight superheroes. Temptations of monotonous married wifes monogamous married wives. Jones of the world into a work world. Chunks of the into a work of art. Is there a word for that . What do you say looking at that . I feel very embarrassed that people are being so nice. I am really flattered. Charlie did he capture you . I do not know. Whenever i see myself on the outside, i forget what it is like to be on the inside and vice versa. I forget what my face does and very strange. That is what the job of a cartoonist is, to inhabit a body and put it on the page so when you caner reads that, see it. But i see myself in reality and that is not what it is at all. Charlie this was all from omaha, nebraska. Yes. Middle of the class, middle everything. That was my upbringing. I had a very charmed upbringing. I had very little to work against, other than being the nerd in the school. Not terribly athletic. That is the story of hundreds of thousands of kids. Charlie the majority, i think. Chris always those who may be end up going into humanities. Charlie your race by your mother and her mother. Chris i did not know my dad. He left very early on. I spent a lot of time with my grandmothers house while my mom was at work. Both were incredibly supportive and generous to me, encouraging me of my artwork, especially my mom, who signed me up to our classes. She would take me down to look at the artwork, the renaissance paintings they had on display. I would scratch my head and wonder what it was all about. I really wanted to learn how to draw. It seems like something i could possibly attain somehow or have the skill. It seems like my only hope basically as a human being. Charlie what did peanuts mean . Chris Charles Schultz was the first cartoonist to create an empathetic character. Comic strips were something you looked down on and laughed at. His ingenious was to take his heart and put into the artwork and everyone he met so the reader would go into the picture and come back out through the characters and feel through this characters. Charlie brown was a character you felt not only for but through. It moved me so much when i was a kid that he didnt get valentines that i sent him a valentine. I gave it to my mom to sense, i am not sure what she did with it. Charlie i am sure she sent it. Chris i do not know. The fact that someone can do it with a simple doodle is capturing something about the fundamental truth of a human being and an almost done drawing that would make a kids heartbreak in a way. That is something. There is really something there that is powerful, i think. Charlie take a look at this. This is from an earlier show of mine. May 9, 1997. Here it is. There is kind of a melancholy feeling or area in i think a lot of cartoonists because cartooning, like all other humor, comes from bad things happening. People say, well why dont you have to really brown kicked to the football are having do this or that . That would be happy, but happiness is not funny. I wish we could all be happy but it is not funny. Charlie is it for your experience that humor comes out of sad lives . Charles definitely. One of the greatest scenes of all time is city lights where the blind girl recognizes Charlie Chaplin is the one that paid for her surgery. I do not think there has ever been a more tender scene ever films. It was that filmed. It was sad but funny. Chris wow. Even hearing his voice. About every year or so, i listened to it recorded interview of schulz as a way of censoring myself and kind of keeping a sense of what it really is all about. He is such an unpretentious, warm person, and it comes through in not only what he is saying but the way he says it. Charlie did you learn about empathy from him . Chris i think so. Probably. I remember being deeply moved by our town. I watch in the 70s. A scene where the family members where she was trying to get the family members to look at her because life was going by too quickly. Manyie there were so references to your mother and grandmother. Chris i am lucky. I was raised by women. I think that is a big plus. I did not have a male role model, other than my grandfather, and then later my stepfather, david, who has been the greatest role model of my life in that regard and a great man. I said i feel lucky as a kid because i did not want to punch kids are be aggressive. I wanted to back off and be by myself and try to keep to myself and understand things and fundamentally be nice to people. It sounds naive and childish, but i do not know. Your undergrad our department did what . Chris they had me empathize with people. You cannot empathize with people when theyre sitting in front of you with no close on. Some life drawing clothes on. Some life drawing teachers said do not think about the fact that they do not have close on. Thes on. How could i not empathize if they do not have clothes on . These particles and chemicals in the biological form that contains this consciousness and the sense of potential wounding or arrogance. It is very strange. That is what you need to try to get down, not the light and the dark and the angle of the elbow. Nobody cares about that. Charlie you once said i think drawing is one of the most valuable skills anyone can learn. Chris yes. I think it is totally true. I think i said this earlier, but just the simple of the act of drawing is trying to see something and it puts you into a completely different mental state . It puts you into a state of being in that moment for that specific moment and understanding reality in a way that adults are very good at not doing. We spent most of our lives getting out of the way of things, trying to remember stuff, trying to get through the day, certain regrets and problems and mistakes we made either an hour before or years before. We spent much of our time and this cloud of remembrance and anxiety. Trying to live in that moment is a very difficult accomplishment. I think drawing encourages that more than anything. Charlie tell me about Windsor Mckay. Chris Windsor Mckay was a cartoonist. His more famous for inventing animated cartoons. He did not invent them, but he refined them to the point where he might as well have been given the credit for inventing them. Divide time and space on the page allowed for a ofguage of gesture to kind have a sense of movement on the page that felt real. If you read his pictures not words, do not read the words but if you read his pictures as a sequence in the same way you would read words, a comes to life on the page in a magical way that seems that there is something moving on the page. It is a strange sort of alchemy. That is the basic engine of making comics. Making a drawing seem to come to life on the page. Dry chairman was the artist George Herrmann was the artist who did that. Krazy kat is his best known strip by far. Charlie when did you experiment with animation . Chris when i was an art school. Take a very long time for a few seconds of reward. When you like that are done with something you watched it. I like the activists of comics. That you read them and make them come to life in your mind. The animation, it is an art of watching rather than making it happen i guess. I started reading raw magazine in my teen years when i was searching for pornography in the back room of the comic shop in omaha, nebraska. I managed to graduate to the point where the owner of the start would let me go back there and look for the copies of heavy metal and stuff like that. There was a magazine sticking out of the back of the bin that said raw and i thought, all right this is it. But it was these weird, european comics. I bought it anyway. That one issue changed my life. That issue i can point to that issue as sort of making me realize there was something in that inputting pictures together on a page. Got something almost kind of literary. Charlie what did you learn . Chris from art . Everything. Every month or two on the phone, i think, i do not even a look at i am doing talking to him. Every idea came from him in some way or another. Maybe from reading his worker talking to him over the years. All the ideas i have can trace back to his efforts. Certainly, taking the idea of drawing comics as a medium of selfexpression, that was codified. Andng artists like robert taking it and presenting it in a way that dignified it and didnt make it dismissible, which a lot of cartoonists did not really like. They like that throw away, junkie quality of throwaway comics. You and then did new yorker begin . Chris i think in college or so. People asked me to contribute to the cover. I was very nervous and thought it was not up to par. Over the years, she extraordinarily encouraged charlie arent you too smart to be too modest . Chris i think you have the relationship and burden. I tried inverted. I see first of all that i am not very smart and second of all i have deficits in the aesthetic skill set that i try to rectify. Charlie when you see a deficit you constantly try to rectify it . At the same time, i can understand that. I really do understand the sense believing that you can see you have the power to see how great things can be how much there is to know or how much reference would be valuable. All of that. That seems like a mountain, yet at the same time, dont you have to look at what you have created and see it for what it is and what it means and what it reflects . Chris i tried. Yeah, that is kind of the hard part because that is when i do see it. All i see is the mistakes. Charlie that doesnt make you at half empty guide, does it . Guy, does it . Guy. yeah, half empty i am when it is 3 00 in the morning and i am trying to sleep. If i try hard enough and i was younger, if i just keep going and will get to the point where i do not feel this way anymore and i will finally feel confident about what i do, and that has never happened. Charlie never . Chris no. When i am done with something and it sat for two or three months, i look back and think maybe it was not as bad as i thought it was. Charlie the smartest kid on earth. Chris when i see that now, i can see a lot of problems. Charlie a lot of problems . Do you also see a lot of accomplishments . Chris sure. You know. At the same time, i think braum said something does not have to be good, it just has to be complete. I am misquoting. Something like that. A lot of unintended difficulties in that and other books i have done. I try to structure books in a way that allows for the unattended things to become part of the story. Charlie what did jimmy do for you . Chris other than proving to me that i could stick with something for seven years and get through a whole book i guess, certainly that and also helped me pay the rent, finally. Lifechanges your completely over. I was drawing comics on the side and then all of a sudden to draw this stuff and have it be the source of food and sustenance for yourself and family, it becomes a different relationship than. You have to worry then. You have to worry about certain things. You start to get tore the moment where you feel less inventive or worried that if you try something new and might not work out as well, which is a bad state to be in. It is a difficult thing. I think of how frank reinvented himself so brilliantly every two years. He to the one thing he was avoiding in one phase of his work and embraced it and his new work. I wish i could do that. I tried to do things like that, but i am much too hesitant, i think. Charlie too hesitant . Chris i think so. I wish i had a little more i umph. Charlie the thing you love the most . Chris that is a little charitable. I love being done with it. Charlie because it is hard . Because it is painful . Chris it is difficult, self accusatory. It makes me feel like Getting Started is hard. Once i get going, it is a little easier. Because i am writing as i am drawing when i get to the point where i am thinking it, it is not quite as. Quite as difficult. Charlie how long has this been in creation . Chris i think the publisher invited me to do it in 2006. Charlie 11 years ago. Chris yeah. I know. I am sorry. I did not feel at that time that i have enough work to make it an art book. I do not even know if i still do. Once i finish my previous book charlie so when you finish this, did you feel a great sense of pride . Accomplishment . Satisfaction . Chris a printed well. I was happy about that. That is the horrible part about being a cartoonist. If you work years on a book and it goes to the printer and comes back and the blue was completely, off the whole thing is ruined. Charlie that would be a bad day. Chris yeah. A printed well. It printed well. Working in a medium of reproduction that all cartoonists have to do. In my generation, doing work occasionally commercial that could be interpreted as artwork but wasnt, it was simply drawings made to make the bills. I did not want to confuse those two. I wanted to separate the two. I love the jumpiness of comics, ess the fact that junkin of comics, but the fact that their dismissible is important to me. In the fine arts world, that is not as cut and dry. If you read a comic strip or look at a painting and do not understand it, you blame your own ignorance. If you read a comic strip and do not like it, you think the cartoonist is an idiot. [laughter] i think that is the very a very honest relationship. Charlie with the cartoonist . Chris with the reader. Away, i thinkw it that is good. Charlie tell me about building stories. Chris building stories is a book i started in 2001 and finished in 2011. It is 14 separate books in a box. The idea was to have a story with no beginning or no end. Hopefully it reflected something of the way we remember reality rather than the way we think we go through it, which is straight, which we dont. We can go through it and put it back together and also at the different ways. It is also the way we meet people. We learn about them in a piecemeal way. We do not meet somebody and hear their biography from birth to that moment. You figure things out about them and put them together in mosaics. The whole book itself is kind of an attempt to try to make a dream book. Everybody i think imagines that certain point in their dream life where they hear a beautiful piece of music or see a wonderful painting or amazing film and wake up and say, wait, i made it up. I did that myself. And then it fades. I wanted a book that had that sensation to it, at least. Charlie who is the woman at the center of it . Chris an unnamed protagonist who goes through art school. Start of avoids the Creative Life out of selfdoubt and end up getting married and having a kid in finding out thoughts and centeredness in her life but regrets giving up on her Creative Life. The book, itself, is the attempt to make that dream object, the one moment in her consciousness where she imagines this book in a box about her life in a flash. Charlie you like attack bonus of books . Chris yes and technology. I like the things that mover i hate that stuff. There is nothing more interactive than reading pictures and having something happen on the page. Having to worry if you have to plug it in or if you have the right decoding software. Charlie go ahead. Chris i have done a few things for animated things online that now are not watchable anymore because the link which they were written in whatever is no longer available. It has disappeared. Books are still readily readable to anybody who has the technology of eyeballs in a brain. Charlie this is what Charles Schultz said. Saidarles schultz once cartooning was a fairly sort of profession. You have to draw fairly well. Really well, you would be a painter. If you rose really well, you would be an author. What sort of cartoons results from that . You hold the answers in your hands to be fair. Chris ware is not alone. He is part of cartoonists that have great, emotional stories. That is pretty damn good. Chris yes. He is a nice person. In a lot of ways, ira showed me how to structure a story. I think it is funny the only person in america with a degree in semiotics to actually is employed. Charlie the only one i know. Chris from working in collaborating with him on stories and seeing how the structures them, i learned a great deal. Charlie memory is an important thing. Chris it is all there is. Is all we have. Charlie memory . Chris yeah. There is nothing else we can grab onto. There is nothing else that doesnt matter. That is the only thing we can claim as our own. That is how we get through life. Charlie our memory . Chris yeah. Charlie memory connects us to everything. Chris yeah. Is a construct. And a largeearlier, part, it is imaginary in fiction. A lot of what we believe about certain people are stories we make up about them. Imagine, what are my friends doing right now. I wonder if they think this about me. They probably do. And then that ends up in your larger novel about yourself that you are writing about yourself. Charlie a beautiful book. Chris you are very kind. Thank you. I appreciate it. Charlie i am very accurate. You want the reader to take away what . Chris a feeling of what it feels like to be alive. A sympathetic sense of that feeling. What else can we do . That is what i look for when i read books. I want to know what it is like to be in a human body at that as much details possible so i can hopefully not make some of the same mistakes. And understand how to live my life. Again, it is not a prescriptive instructive manual kind of thing. It is like listening to a song or understanding a sense of something intuitively or internalizing something. Notlie you say by writing, sitting down and writing everything down, but tediously adding in images later, but allowing all caps at the same time, and certainly, the way we remember life itself, with just as much overlap and exchange in our minds eye. Chris that is true. That is what all writers do anyway even if they plot everything out. They are still filling in the cracks and there is a degree of improvisation. It comes from the way the brain is connected. It is the only oregon that named itself. Organ that named itself. When you draw something that you have recalled, it reminds somethingn you draw that you have recalled, it comes out on the page and it becomes this continuous loop of memory and understanding that grows on the page as you are working on it. There is something about the reading of the pictures that makes it especially tied to language and memory. It is not like painting. Charlie how long have you been working on rusty brown . Chris since 2001. Ive done other books at the same time. I tried to work on them at the same time so when i get it of one, i can work on the other. Charlie so it is coming out next year . Chris part of it. The first half. The other will be done when i am very, very old. The life of myself is the idea i for 17 or on a book 20 years is possibly interesting because otherwise it is completely insane. I do not know. I work as fast as i can. Charlie something comes up to you and says, why are you a cartoonist . Chris my daughter asks me that frequently. She was recently sitting at my pages that were hanging that i have a reference. She said, is there anybody out there who is really excited about this book coming out . I thought, maybe there is not. Maybe there is totally nobody. Me, i want to have it done, but you know. [laughter] , shesked me recently, too said, are you sad . Do you dislike yourself . And i said well, sort of. She said, you are doing all this work and it looks good and people seem to like it. You should not feel so bad about yourself. In fact, to do that is kind of selfindulgent, dont you think . And i thought, wow 12 years old. So weird. Charlie this is amazing. Chris yeah. She is something else. Charlie thank you. Chris thank you. I do not know what to say. I am so flattered and deeply moved to be here. It means a great deal. Charlie it means a lot to deal. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. I am a Alisa Parenti and youre watching bloomberg technology. Lets start with a check on your first word news. Authorities say a gunman killed four people and killed others Tuesday Morning and wounded others Tuesday Morning in Northern California before police shot and killed them. One of the shootings on the reserve took place at an elementary school, where at least one student was hurt. It was very clear early on that we had a subject that was randomly picking targets. Assistantntys sheriff told ap the death toll could rise. Mitch mcconnell says the chamber tax take up the gops