Ways to media come, along with these Television Companies support cspan two as a public service. My name is joe vogel, im a state delegate here representing the great city of gave herberg and it is my pleasure to introduce all of you to the city of gain berg. I am so thrilled this morning to be introducing ari shapiro as he presents his book the best strangers in the world, stories from a life when i first saw this book will be presented to the book festival in before i was giving the honor of introducing the session, i took note of the book. I screenshotted the cover of it, to add it to my reading list. Not only because i am an occasional listener of all Things Considered, but also because of my own interest in listening to strangers. For as long as i can remember, i have been fascinated by strangers. The very idea of a stranger, right, what is a stranger . Its pretty wild. While others shy away from meeting, speaking, with an listening to strangers, like ari, i aint always do the opposite whenever possible. Now is the state legislator, listening to strangers, turning strangers into friends, is quite literally my job. But my intrigue in strangers has neighborhoods the politics. I found myself reflecting on the origin of this while readings book. Like ari, i grew up as a jewish teenager growing up in the suburbs. And with my stories and identities i was, quote unquote an outsider in almost every room i walked into. Ari talked about this in the book. He says it felt like a superpower. The ability to move between worlds. The boundary crossing skills i learned in for as the kid in fargo, i found a career where i could perform those acts of translation and be a liaison for groups to which i had no personal connection beyond my journalistic interests. My microphone in headset served as a circle and mac. When i strap the mom i could enter hidden worlds that were hidden to people on the surface. I dont carry around a headset or a microphone, but i go around listening and thinking to understand, not for the sake of reporting, like kyrie, but to turn that understanding of peoples challenges and hope to make their lives better. It is aris commitment to turn his commitment as an outsider to a superpower and make a profound impact by sharing people stories. The super power has allowed ari shapiro to become a host of all Things Considered, nprs awardwinning afternoon show. Ari as reported from above the arctic circle, and above air force one. He has covered wars in iraq and israel, hes filed stories from dozens of countries in most of the 50 states. He has one to edward r. Moral awards, one for his reporting on life and death of breonna taylor, and another for his coverage of the trump administrations asylum policies on the u. S. Mexico border. Thank you for listening. And please welcome ari shapiro [applause] they, appreciate it. Its so good to be with you all here today, and especially with clay, who was a recent, a year have to go arrival to the d. C. Area, who serves us and the library of conference congress, where hes doing incredible work, and im looking forward to talking to you. And joe was, were so happy to introduce. You i woke up this morning inside that there is a new documentary on hbo about on a summer, and i thought should i go talk to ari shapiro, or should i watch the donna summer documentary . [laughter] i assume you watched it on the way here on the uber on your phone. Why choose . Thats my life motto. I think im probably the only literary director in the history of a library of congress who writes his questions in the back of the book. Thats what i do to. When im prepping for other interviews on all Things Considered, i take all my notes on the back of the book. It works for me. And then when you give it away to someone else later, theyll know what interested me about the book. [laughter] i want to ask first about this very strong thread that runs through the book, which is about your pursuit of reporting the news, lets say, in a more human way. Every chapter in the book that is about reporting, that seen themed sort of arises. Tell us about the story of the syrian refugee that you, there are many refugees that you couldve chosen to follow, and you interviewed him repeatedly but then your colleagues in npr. I met him in the coastal turkish city of izmir. I had flown there. I was based in london, i was a foreign correspondent. I was traveling all over the world covering different stories. The syrian refugee crisis was at a peak. We had somebody based in istanbul. My editors had wanted to go to coastal turkey, which is the jumping off point for people to try to reach europe. I realized when i got there that i and our listeners and americans generally were so inundated with stories of the syrian refugee crisis and it almost became background noise. So i was trying to find a way, in addition to turning around the daily news stories i was reporting while i was there, to kind of breakthrough that background noise quality and connect with listeners and help them appreciate the specific to specificity and humanity of the people who are experiencing this. So i decided to find one person who story we could follow. There were thousands of syrians in izmir. How do you find one who you will follow for, i didnt know, but it would turn out to be years, so i was walking down the sidewalk on this very hot day and people were sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes. I was striking conversations with various people. When i met this guy named montour omar, an english teacher in syria who had left his wife and kids behind with his parents and was trying to make the journey to germany and hopefully bring his family after him and its this strange kind of cold inhuman calculation, is this the person im going to follow . Will i use quotes from this conversation in a new spot move along . You dont know what the future is gonna bring. You dont know if youre gonna be successful. I did follow him and i did have to enlist so many of my colleagues who were correspondence across europe to track every step of his journey, and i told him, were not gonna be able to help you on this journey, but we will be able to at least tell people what youre going through, to hopefully help people understand your experience. And we did end up following him for years as he made his way to germany, as he settled germany, as he tried to bring his family over. The ambassador to the united nations, under obama, actually played a role in this story. It ended up twisting and evolving in ways that i never could have imagined. Im glad to say it has a happy ending, but i will let you read the specifics of the book. [laughter] but thats the title chapter. The title comes from a work that a friend of mine created a hung in my house forever. I think the concept capture so perfectly the strange vulnerability and intimacy of the conversations that i had with people who often experienced the worst day of their lives, whether its war, natural disaster, mass shooting, people confided me in open up to me and are vulnerable which to me, this person theyve never met, and then we go our separate ways and we never see each other again. Let me ask you about ukraine in that context. Because you said, speaking about the coverage of syria, how do you find a story that allows your listener to have compassion. And i confess to, i read the news all the time, but there is so much that is happening in ukraine, and i think just yesterday the news listed President Biden ahead sort of allowed in a roundabout way for f16s to be sold to ukraine. And i confess to sort of being a little worn out. Absolutely, yeah. I am worn out, but people who are in ukraine are suffering much much worse. But you are in ukraine before this most recent war. I was in ukraine when russianbacked separatists started taking over in the east. I went to kyiv intending to report feature stories and just happened to be there when what became the war in Eastern Ukraine started bubbling up. And so its a different perspective now, looking at the war today, and having been there when those seeds started to sprout. But sorry, yeah, go ahead. Are they reporters out there who are still in ukraine doing a great job, can humanity in a more human . Not to toot our own horn, but my colleague who reports for npr had been based in greece was making trips into ukraine and was recently hired to be our correspondent base there, tells the most beautiful vivid memorable stories that go so far beyond the u. S. Is authorized sale of this kind of weapon. Im thinking about a story she told about borscht. I love telling stories through food. Its such a useful tool. Wherever you go, in any timing, and in any place, any socioeconomic stratum, you will find food. That food tells you something about the place and time you are in. And so i can remember very vividly one story she told about the war in ukraine through borscht. I think she has done a beautiful job of telling stories about the war that force you to listen, but you cant turn away from, the dont just blend into the background. But it is really challenging when on all Things Considered we have to fill two hours, five days a week, and theres a strong gravitational pull towards incrementalism and. So our challenge, day after day, week after week, especially as the war drags on for more than a year, or as there is yet another mass shooting, or as it is whatever month of the president ial campaign were covering every day, is to say how do we tell the stories in a compelling way . How do we engage or listeners . How do we have something new to the conversation when things do so often repeat themselves . How do you sort of reinvent the story when youre not necessarily being given new information. Right. But that inspiration can sometimes lead to insight. There was a story, when i was a White House Correspondent covering the Obama Administration, i dont write this one in the book, it was the fiscal cliff which more lot of similarities to the debt limits were dealing with now. And i was so frustrated with telling all of these incremental stories about the fiscal cliff day after day, i decided to do something which the audience might appreciate which was the fiscal cliff for english majors. And so i went to somebody at the Shakespeare Library in the four theater and on these other places and i asked what the great works of literature help us understand about the political fight that barack obama and john boehner were engaged in. It was clearly out my frustration and exhaustion with the desperately reach for something new, but that turned out to be very new endeavor from other stories we told about. Do you write in the book about being being assigned to the white house beaten feeling conflicted about it. Because in the white house coverage you just give very specific things said to you. A pejorative phrases to not refer to power. Yeah [laughter] the reason i first declined the position is how to find stories that are new. When youre surrounded by some of the best journalists in the world who are all receiving the same information youre receiving, what value added can you bring . Thats the real challenge. You mentioned a little while ago that sort of intimacy of your work in trying to convey and report on those intimate situations that you are in. There is something very interesting to me about radio versus being a broadcast journalist, where i think that human voice connection, i mean you are out on stage more than most journalists, but nonetheless, not all of your listeners have seen you in a setting like this. Are you all surprised to hear my voice coming out of strangers face . Is that a thing youre experiencing . Now [laughter] but theres an intimacy between listener and radio reporter. Does that make you feel like, does that give you a sort of a window or portal to being more revealing in this . Youre absolutely right that i know, as a listener, there is this incredible level of vulnerability, and just personal connection with the people who spend time with us on the radio. I am with people in their cars, in their kitchens, in their showers, in their ear buds as theyre walking their dogs. And there are people who spent every single day with me. And so i want to be a companion to them but also, they didnt choose me. I might not be their cup of tea. So where i want to be my full real self on the radio, i also kind of want to be a cipher and i want listeners to allow themselves to imagine that they are in my shoes, whether im on the border of polands ukraine or senegal or the white house, i want them to imagine they could be theyre asking the questions im asking. I want to be real, i wanna bring my full self. And i also want to fade in the background. If someone comes away from a story ive done thinking primarily about me, that ive done it wrong. So when i set out to write this book, the big challenge was to find a level of comfort in centering myself in these stories. And i think of the memoir as a combination of account of the way the person i am has shaped the stories ive told and conversely the way stories ive told have shape the person that i am. The note i get most frequently from my editor is i was sending him drafts of chapters wise okay, now lets put a little viewing here. And that was a stretch for me. That was a learning curve. And i actually found, as i wrote each chapter, the first draft of each one started off as this happened, that happened, the next thing happened. I would set it aside for a while and come back to it, reread it, and realize that this chapter is actually about democracy or identity or whatever the case may be, and then i would rewrite the chapter and try to change out that theme and wrestle with the largest the larger issues a little more deeply. I hope this book has meaning beyond the chronicles of a journalist, so matory the world with a band. I hope at is depersonalizationing. Thats why. I would sort of go through after each chapter had been drafted and say okay, heres actually what i want to ask excavate here. Lets take one of those stories, if thats what you front and center, for those of you who havent read the book, there is this cuckoo bananas story of him filing a story, literally at the very last second. At air force one. Could you talk about that . The key detail you are living out about this cuckoo bananas story about me on air force one at the last second, is that i was on the toilet. [laughter] on air force one. Yes thank you for giving me the punchline. It was a top secret trip to afghanistan. Obviously with the president is going to a war zone, they dont advertise it, so we flew, taking off from andrews, in the middle of the night, landing at the air force base in afghanistan. 13 hours later the middle of the night we are on the ground for maybe three hours, and i had worked out the plan with the one editor i was able to tell about this trip, then i would file from the ground when we were in afghanistan and then the story that was gonna air the next morning, on Weekend Edition saturday with scott simon, i would write that in the first leg of the journey home, then we would refuel at Ramstein Air Base in germany where i would edit it and file it, we didnt have wifi in the air, and then we would take off from germany to d. C. It would air while we were flying on Weekend Edition. So we are scheduled to be on the ground for 30 minutes, which was enough time to end it and file. And after i had edited the piece i started tracking, which is what we called when we recorded the script written, and someone was chattering next to me so i moved to a different seat, and again, i should have, today in this part of my life, could i have five minutes of silence people wouldve been obliging but i was like oh no, i dont want to interrupt and would be rude. So the one quiet place i can find [laughter] is the bathroom. So i locked myself in, put down the toilet, started recording my track. And i started to feel this rumbling and i thought, no, no, no, we have another ten minutes on the ground. This plane is not moving. And then becoming unmistakable that the plane was indeed moving. And exhilarating. And i had not yes yet finish telling my story. Once we got into the clouds bullet of the outside world. Im trying not to let the cat panic in my voices im recording the story. I sign out. I stop the recording. I go back to my seat, where my laptop was, and of course im reconnect to the wifi is air force one is hurdling down the runway in germany. The noses in the air as they reconnect and im like uploading my tracks and the 32 uploaded, 57 uploaded, where in the, air and finally its as a hunter percent uploaded. And i was so relieved. I shut my laptop in order to gin and tonic. [laughter] but the thing i say in the book about those moments, which is important for younger journalists, there is a nice tradition ever since the pandemic started and there was a small crew that works on site and all Things Considered, then on fridays we have an after work happy hour on the patio of the npr building. So yesterday shows a little rough going. We needed to get into. We are having drinks afterward i would say to some of the younger journalists on the team, the stakes are so low. Were not emergency room doctors. Nobodys on an operating room table. Its only radio. If my story did not get filed, they wouldve figured something out. Its okay. And so thats what i try to remember in those moments of, oh my god crisis. Its a great story. Thank you. Were all book lovers here. In fact, when the shuttle brought me here this morning we came across a guy who was wearing a tshirt that says i closed my book to be here. [laughter] hats off. Thats a great tshirt. Of course i love your chapter about fiction. And chapter four, the book lovers. And you write about this sort of, this feeling of apocalypse that we have in our world now, or at least every question that we seem to be confronting as a society seems pretty Climate Change, war. And you found, i dont know if refuge is the right word, but you have a beautiful moment where you are interviewing the famous scifi writer and shes not exactly put you in your place but gave you a perspective. Absolutely. And i think about it and coat it all the time. The larger lesson of this chapter is that i understand the world better through fiction than i do through interviews with politicians, ceos, other leaders. The example i gave about the fiscal cliff for english majors is a perfectly case study. Shakespeare and the other rioters who i quoted in that story gave me insight into the fiscal cliff that i didnt get from talking to john boehner. The quote that i thought was just so great and i talk about it all the time, i asked why so she won the hugo award three years in a row for three books in her broken earth trilogy. Shes the only author ever to have done that. She was the first black woman ever to win the whole ward for first novel. So i asked her why she wanted to begin this trilogy with the end of the world, the apocalypse. Her main character lost a child at the very beginning of the book and she says well, for that character the apocalypse was when her child died. She was interested, she said, in the subjectivity of what we consider apocalypse, and that were many of us think of as apocalyptic has been the reality for four other people for a long time. So when i think about Climate Change or black lives matter protests or, as i was writing this, i was in california, where there were huge wildfires blocking out the sky, or we were in the middle of the pandemic, it was a lockdown. So these things that feel apocalyptic to us might actually have been a reality for other people for a very long time. And our perspective depends on where we sit. That was an insight i gain through a conversation with the Science Fiction writer that applies to so many stories that i tell in the real world when im going out and talking to people who are living through these times that may feel apocalyptic. How do you, when you write in the book when you interview a writer on the show you always read from the first to the last page and, dirty little secret like, that doesnt always happen when a journalist is interviewing someone. As i found on this book tour. [laughter] my chapter of pink where teeny is titled which is i dont want to work, which is the course of the most famous song. This band that i say with, and of course i did one interview, i try to call up the person and theyre not even in the d. C. Area. They said im really interested you title one of your chapters which means i dont want to work, because you do work so hard. And i said well, as you know, from reading the chapter, that its about the pink martini. [laughter] yes, i bring i read every book beginning to end before i do an interview. But you must get a ton of submissions. How do you decide which writers there are 1 million great books that we dont feature on all Things Considered. Were not a book program. The two hours a day that we put out our maybe eight minutes devoted to books, and it takes me time to read a book and im also preparing for interviews with a striking hollywood writer and a senator. I dont pretend to be the authoritative account of books that a person should read. Its a collective effort, because theres a whole team of producers and editors on the show, the hosts, and everyone is getting pitches from both publishers and authors, and i try to keep a mix of fiction and nonfiction. I try to select books that reflect the world as we live in it in all its complexity, from Artificial Intelligence history to great literary fiction. The new book by abraham is so good. 700 pages, and i couldnt put it down. I want to do Something Like that alongside just before i interviewed abraham , i interviewed paul soiree who his book is about a. I. In the future of war. The kinds of books that i feature and i also let go of the pressure to do it right, because there is no right way to do it. And another dirty little secret, not every book that i do an interview about on all Things Considered is a book that i would recommend. There are a lot of nonFiction Books that makes a great conversation, even Fiction Books that make for great great conversation, that i dont necessarily think are a great read. But im not reviewing the book on the air. Im talking to the author of the book. The other thing is in every one of the conversations, because the conversation is airing on the publication day, nobody will have read the book, and so i want the conversation to have value as a conversation and not just as a promo for the book that the vast majority of people will never read. Im an ask you about objectivity. This is the last question for me. Well have questions for you also, thinking of your questions, and microphone is there in the back. In journalism circles, especially since george floyd, this question of objectivity has really come up, and you dont attack objectivity in the book, but you have this interesting moment where when you are off reporting on the Israeli Palestinian conflict a listener rhodium and said can he really report fairly on that when hes jewish . And you write about this interesting phrase that none of us have an absence of identity, that we are all human beings in one way or another, and we all have our histories. Could you just talk about that a little bit, about the sort of humanity, not only that you want to bring to you draw but that you have to. Yeah. This is actually a good example. A chapter starts out as this happened in that happened and iced upside may come back and realize, oh this chapter about israel is actually about objectivity and identity. And many of the stories i tell the most salient part of my identity is not my status in a marginalized group. Like when im reporting from zimbabwe the fact that im white is the most relevant detail. When im reporting from northern iraq, the fact that im american is the most important aspect of my identity. But part of the identity of every one of us here is that we pay taxes. So whos going to report on changes to the tax code . Because we all have a stake in it. So if, the way i handle the question, should you be able to report on israel, should somebody who you can get regular port on abortion rights . Should be reporting on Racial Justice . So should a person who pays taxes be allowed to reported changes to the tax code . The answer these questions is yes, you should be able to report on those things, and so then the question becomes, will do a pretend that identity doesnt exist . To be pushed to the side . To bring it to bear . How do we wrestle with that . I do think objectivity is a worthy goal and i also think that we carry our stories, our identity, our history, our experience with us wherever we go. And those two things kind of intentioned sometimes. I dont believe theres such a thing as the view from nowhere, which is the phrase that an older generation of journalists and to a certain extent the current generally generation of journalists used to describes the ideal of reporting. But i think its naive of us to presume that we are all the same and that there is some aspirational ideal of identityless journalism that candace and from the heavens as the one accurate account of a thing. And another example of this that explore in the book is, when i want to cover the pulse nightclub shooting in orlando, florida, and a club, i think my experience going to gave ours, going to clubs, made my reporting better. That was a place where my identity, i think, added to the value of my reporting. And frankly another one of my colleagues, adrian flurry, tow who went down to cover the shooting as well, whos latino and influence banish speaker, was also able to say richard, restore ease. The story happened on latin night. He was able to connect with a community on a different, deeper level because of his identity in history in the same way that i was able to connect with the community on the upper levels because of mine. Do we have any questions back there . This is going to give ari a heart attack, but we luckily the ambulance is right. There we do love a dramatic finish. When going to those places and talking to people, not like living their lives but being in their lives, what would you say is like, you know its hard sometimes when it comes to leaving those areas. Even talking with him in being there. Have you ever noticed any hardship in separating, at times, and being like, this is my job and im leaving here. If that makes any sense. Yeah delivering here . That essentially, correct me if im wrong, how does a journalist, after having made these intimate connections, how does the journalist leave the story or that place . It has been such a part of the fabric of my life for so long that this is what i do. Generally speaking, ive kind of come to love the ability to dip into a world and dip out of it. For the most part, i dont generally find it challenging to say that was an experience i had and there are two shell stay and now i will go someplace else into something else. But there are exceptions to that. So there is a story i tell on the very last chapter of the book about Nonprofit Organization in the city of jody carried it into indonesia, where a transgender woman who serve a matriarch of the Trans Community in indonesia has created a home for hiv and she made such an impression on me that five years after i visited there, which i arbitrarily decided was an adequate amount of time, i decided to donate to her organization. Which i wouldnt do while i was reporting on them, obviously. But five years after the, fight i was still thinking about the work she was doing, and i would become a contributor. They dont, as far as i know, have any other american voters. But after three months i would go check. Great great, okay, okay who has wears the where is the mic . Okay mic . Okay. Other questions . Other questions you have to volunteer back weve got the volunteer back here here lets just wait for the micro silver second if you dont mind. How was it for a jewish young man to grow up in saugus . Funny thing fargo had not one but two synagogues thought one of the old jewish jokes but all repeated version of it. Jewish guy get stranded on a does ronnys giving his rescuers a tour this is the library in the synagogue this is the other synagogue. They say wait a minute youre the only person on the sitting on why theyre two synagogues . And he says, that one i would never go to [laughter] so fargo has two synagogues. It might have to gavers. I dont even know if it has one, i left when i was eight. My family kept kosher our meat would arrive once a month on a freezer truck from chicago and we would put the knee in a deep freezer in our garage and my mother would make hala every friday night. It was great, and every december my older brother and i in our Elementary School would go classroom to classroom with a minnora and a dreidel telling people what hanukkah was. And as in the book that was my First Experience as being a public speaker and sort of an ambassador showing people that something might be foreign and change and make it something they can relate to. [laughter] so far got worked out . [laughter] le pen one of the questions do we have . Is there a volunteer to have a microphone again . You must have questions for ari shapiro . Okay we have one over there. Or someone on the aisle right here. Either way yeah. I guess its time. When you started and graduate from its an interesting ones. So when i got out ecology applied for any job to think. If i applied for job clip club med i got rejected from literally everything into putting the npr internship. I think this is important, because people feel like their failures our shapiro got rejected for an npr scholarship internship. Definitely Legal Affairs correspondent hires around interns separate from the npr program. I applied to her, she offered me an opportunity and ive never looked back. Ive been an npr ever since, and she remains a great friend and mentor. I would also recommend her book about her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg in that generation of women in washington. Okay weve got one over here. I think she has the mic already. Youre the moderator animal to steal your show. It just comes naturally to me. This is about me. Oh great. I am a person like you, i love talking to strangers. I just want to say now you have inspired me to start writing about these experiences. Wonderful thank you i dirty little secret is i will not talk to anyone on an airplane. The thing about being a journalist you can always walk away on an airplane you cant walk away. [laughter] one over here well see if anybody has a question. So i listen to npr a law intellect cant anymore. The world is so dark and there are so many dark stories. From your perspective doesnt this depressed you . Can you give us any message of hope that there is any way we are going to get out of the mess . Absolutely. Part number one is that all Things Considered, within the last year we have made a really active effort to in every half hour includes some moment of humanity, optimism joy and light. Because life so much more in the worst things happen in the world. So hopefully youve heard a change because weve definitely been very conscious to make. Thats number one. Thing number two. There is the delegates of looking at the world which is more people have access to clean water than ever before. Fewer people are living in poverty than ever before. If your babies are dying in childbirth than ever before. More young women are being educated than ever before in human history. So actually the world is a better place to live in now and it ever has been for all human existence. So that is a ray of hope right . And then the third thing that the person i quote more than anyone else in the world is the writer and performer taylor mac. Taylor, are you familiar with taylor . Taylor shortlisted for the pulitzer prize, a piece that they did in 2016 was called a 24 decades of popular music. And told a story the United States of america from 1776 to 2016 every hour with a decade and it was a 24hour performance from noon to noon. I said to taylor, when you tell the story of this country from slavery to the trail of tears to japanese internment camps and on and on and on and see all these dark chapters, what context you get . What larger lesson to takeaway . And taylor said, as you tell these stories, you find that these things go in cycles and i dont know why the if they do, but as you tell the stories you also find the stories of people who were trying to make life better for those around them. And all that and even skin hope to do is be one of those people in whatever time, whatever place we have to define ourselves. [applause] taylor mac. Another favor taylor may ahtanum a quote is perfection is for asked holes. , . I think if you practice something every day you get good at. You practice the piano, in the decent interest, you cook every day to be a good cook. And so i love listening, all of storytelling, all of those activities, and i think i can probably was predisposed to being better than average at them. But also having a job or a do it every day for a living, i get to hear the broadcast and register the moments that i missed an opportunity to ask a followup question, or i praised something in a way the triggered someone. Its a constant process of learning and improving and practicing and so having done for 20 years i think ive gotten better at it over time, but its also something that you know my grandmother was a fortune teller, she worked in carnivals and she red cards. Something to carry gross asked me the fresh air interviews it didnt make the entity cut was, do you think she was really psychic or do you think she was a fraud . [laughter] and like my grandmother was this amazing woman and i was so stumped by that question. But where it ultimately came down as what she came down as a fortune teller has something in common with what i do as a journalist which is you are picking up on subtle cues and you are perceiving things that are present but might be missed by others. Piecing at those threads and see what they lead to. So in that sense i think listening is a skill you can build but its also like any skill, the thing that some people are innately better at than others. We have time for one more question. Okay back there in the back. Anybody who didnt get to ask a question can please follow theres assigning over here. And the people behind you on the side of the line if its a multi part question. [laughter] was there no wifi on air force one . White house . Possible the might actually be there now. But i was actually covering the white house, was the Obama Administration and at this point, i would be surprised if it has not changed because theres so much security around air force one that technology is so specific to an aircraft that carries the president of the United States that if they prevent people in the press cabin to openly communicating their location wouldnt surprise me. Welcome to the federal government. Blackberries in the federal government none. Maybe the pilot. [laughter] thank you so much this is been so much fun barry. [applause]