Magazine, talking about his fight with the fbi and wont he why he wont back down. Let me start with the obvious, what is your assessment of him and his commitment to this . Nancy thats what i was most curious about and why i wanted to hear from him. On the face of it, why would the countries richest, most valuable tech company pick a fight with the fbi over a terrorist cell phone . It seems strictly insane from a pr point of view. Ly, apple has a huge commercial steak with privacy and secretly which are its product but talking to him, it was clear this is something he feels passionately about and the stakes of this debate around encryption are so high that having a single judge and a single court or a single case, even an important and emotional case like this, does not make sense. This is something that has to be debated by the american public, by the congress, should be handled with Congress Passing laws that determine when Law Enforcement should be able to break into these incredibly powerful databases we now all have built about ourselves and carry with us. So hes not satisfied unless it goes all the way to the supreme court, and there is a decision on this individual case. He wants to see a broader decision made in congress . Nancy he says its not just about this case. Someone like the manhattan da has 175 phones he would like access to. Law enforcement officials all over the country have similar cases where it would help them build their cases if they could break into iphones. He says there is no possible procedure that can be used to make this a casebycase method because, in our own dealings in National Security, processes and courts and judges that make decisions about things like this. Nancy thats right, he would say i am not apples defense attorney but i wanted to hear him, how he answered. It is not back this phone has a , key that would unlock it and if he just turns that over to the fbi, the fbi can on lock the phone and get the information and then you are one and done. That key does not exist, that door does not exist. They would need to build a new operating system and install it on this phone in order to let the fbi use brute force to get into the phone by testing the 10,000 different possible passcodes. Once you build that operating system, not only will other people want access to it, it will get out into the wild. Charlie there is no way to stop it. Nancy you cannot know the back door that only the good guys use. Everyones a safety and privacy becomes threatened once that operating system exists. He does not think it is possible to actually lock out engineers and investigators into a sealed room and opened the own and then phone, make it go away, and no one else can use it. What does he say about knowing that he is in opposition to the fbi . It is not a comfortable position. Especially if it is terrorism. Nancy he recognizes that that the optics of this are terrible, and he is uncomfortable with it. He has likened this to past civil rights fights where he feels the government in this case is overreaching and someone has to say stop, slow down, lets talk about what is really at stake. Let me say that apple has a lot at stake as to whether Technology Companies and everyone from microsoft to facebook and amazon, they have filed amicus briefs in support of apple. Someone like Michael Hayden was not soft on terrorism who understands the head of the nsa and cia and understands the threat of cyber attack well, also has ended up coming down on the side of apple. That encryption is something that is valuable and important for our National Security. Charlie no exceptions from Michael Hayden . Nancy this exception of building a backdoor to break through this encryption, he is on the side of apple which i think is interesting. People have switched sides on this. Country is divided. Its not a black and white case. Its a series of tradeoffs. Charlie heres what he said to you he said the way we get somewhere our journey is very ugly. But i am an optimist that we ultimately arrive at the right thing. Thinks theink he right way to arrive there is to have this debate collectively, publicly, have congress address it. You said cant there be any , limits . If its one court deciding in one domestic terrorism case that its ok to unlock the phone, another court might decide it is ok in a robbery case or a divorce case or a tax fraud case. Dont we Want Congress to be the the ones who say these are the circumstances under which we think it is ok to break into a phone . These are the circumstances which it is not. Charlie i know tim cook and respect him but he calls up the idea that this has anything to do with apples business. Nancy yes. And it may be a false choice, about principle or is this about profits . It may well be about both. His point is that apple did not invent encryption and apple does not own encryption. Charlie but it is getting more and more encrypted. Nancy with the last ios, its the default setting. Increasingly, encryption is the norm and his point is if apple no longer was able to encrypt your data, the bad guys will still easily go outside the u. S. Its easy for them to still be able to encrypt their communications. It would just make the rest of us more vulnerable. Because the average american does not want to have to be a Computer Scientist to keep their data say. Charlie there is also controversy about whatsapp where there are issues about how terrorists are using them to protect their own communication. Let me turn to another question. This is what lev grossman says. It emerged that resetting the password, they could have gotten the phone to make a fresh backup of itself automatically but once you change the password, it wont back itself up without the passcode. Nancy because the phone actually was not owned by the terrorist, it was owned by San Bernardino county. They thought they could get the information off of it just by resetting the password and oud account. His icl they did that and they found that the phone had not actually been backed up for the last few weeks. If, instead of doing that, they had gone to his house and plugged it in, it would have automatically backed up, then they would have had all the information on the phone. The one door that was available to them and apple had helped them open, it turned out they made that door less useful. Charlie who is winning the battle of Public Opinion . Nancy that is a moving target. You have seen some people like Lindsay Graham who initially came out against apple who, upon further conversation, has now been more inclined to see the other side. Charlie so apple may be winning . Nancy i dont know that they are winning but to the extent this becomes a more complex debate than just the soundbite, they are protecting the terrorists against the fbi, to that extent, apple is winning if they are able to say there is much more at stake than a false dichotomy see of privacy versus security. Charlie you say sooner or later these questions will need to be put before the American People which is a reason the fbi has made this fight so ferocious and public. The question of where National Security meets privacy. Nancy there is an enormous amount of information that we all have made available about ourselves quite apart from what is encrypted on our devices. Charlie that we dont want other people to know. Nancy in a way, this is the golden age of surveillance people have said. We have bugged ourselves. We make our health data and what we eat and where we are at any given time and we have all of that available and much of it is available publicly. What Law Enforcement is able to find out about anyone that they are interested in is vastly greater than it has ever been in history. Part of the question is, to what extent does the fbi and other Law Enforcement need to do what our National Security infrastructure has been doing, upgrading their capabilities as opposed to is this a shortcut . Is the fbi trying to take a shortcut to get this information . As opposed to becoming a real 21st century Law Enforcement organization. Thats what one round of Technology Critics have said is that this is not the way you want to do it. Charlie do you accept the idea that apple makes the argument that there is no such thing that this is a one phone case . It cannot be that . Nancy why would this one case be different than another murder or criminal case that involves a where lawr, enforcement says in order to build our case, we need access. Warrantdes which cases intrusion and which cases do not . People come to this table from the Silicon Valley and people who are smart about understanding where we are in technology and computers and all of that. Many of them will argue or some of them, will argue that the government can go to banks and get access to their bank statements. And that this is very private but there is a process to do that. Why cant there be a process to do this . There was even legal precedent, somebody who had a bullet embedded in his shoulder that investigators needed to make their case and could they force a doctor, against the patients wishes, to remove the bullet . Ultimately, if that work its way through the courts, the patient won. That that took multiple appeals shows you that the reach of Law Enforcement, as apple points out, this is under the all writs act, the ability of Law Enforcement to have fairly unlimited access to the places they need to go to make their case is wellestablished legal precedent. If we think because of the technological universe we are now living in and because of these incredibly powerful databases we have created about ourselves, i will bet you your phone has more information about you than your house does. Charlie oh, i am sure it does. Nancy now that we have which didnt exist 10 years ago but we are living in this new world we have created and the law needs , to catch up with that. That is why theyre feeling is this is something that needs to be decided in congress. Apple says we will abide by the law, obviously. But, doing this on a putsbycase basis databases and everyone at risk. Charlie everyone knew this was coming because people at talked to like ash carter, secretary of defense, he is concerned on a couple of levels about how they deal with Silicon Valley wherever the source is of remarkable technological innovation and they worry about the relationship with Silicon Valley and worry about how they form some kind of cooperative relationship that can deal with a range of issues. You put your finger on one of the most interesting issues here. A lot of the Silicon Valley companies that are involved in this case are this centurys media companies. In the 20th century, the media had huge commercial interests and they had a public trust and a public responsibility. And they would have to weigh when you not publish something because of National Security or when do you go to court to publish the pentagon papers . That territory and those obligations were well explored. Now we are in the new world world new set of players now has the kind of power those 20thcentury players had. What are their obligations, what are their public responsibilities, whether it is to the government, these are global companies. They may be born and based in america but they are global , companies. Apple sells 25 of its iphones in china. Its easy for them to say that if the United States government can tell us to open this backdoor, so can the iranian or chinese government. The fact is, they are looking at this across the entire globe. And their interests and obligations everywhere. Charlie tim cook comes out of alabama. He was one of the first top ceos to announce he was gay. Tim cook is a guy who has pictures of Martin Luther king and Robert Kennedy in his office. He is a guy that has enormous respect for people who have been prepared to go the distance for their beliefs. Nancy that is exactly the mode that he appears to be operating in in this case. You could say it would be in the interest of apple to have handled this more quietly. Or you could argue as the Justice Department has that no, apple wanted this public fight because it is good for their branding. Even that is an interesting question. My sense from him certainly was that this is something where he thinks the stakes of this debate are exceptionally high and they go much higher than simply the stakes of finding out what might be on this one phone. Charlie thank you, great to have you. Time, magazine cover story, apple ceo tim cook on his fight with the fbi and what he will not back down written bylev grossman. It is an ongoing story, and the magazine gives more context. Back in a moment, stay with us. Charlie John Feinstein is here and has been called the dean of the College Basketball press and his new book explores the complex relationships and backyard rivalries of three coaches who dominated College Basketball during the 1980s and 1990s, dean smith, duke coach mike krzyweski and jim valvano. Its called the legend club. Hall of fame coach jim calhoun calls his book a must read for all lovers of College Basketball and the personalities who have made this game great. Welcome back. John thank you. Charlie this is a story you said youre not born to write but you lived it. I live in the middle where all this took place. John as you know, i went to college at duke and met dean smith first of the three as a terrified duke junior. I tried to interview him about Tate Armstrong who was on his olympic team. I was 19 and scared to death by dean could not have been nicer. He had actually read something i had written in the Student Newspaper at duke because back then, they clipped every single paper in the country. I had written something, saying bill foster who was the duke coach had modeled his program after dean. He said you were fair to us in that piece especially someone from duke and that became a running theme for 35 years. I was covering the acc for the washington post, in the 1980s when dean was the icon, valvano was the rockstar and krzyweski was the little engine trying to get started in the early 80s. They were born nine days apart. And here is the irony i found out researching this book. A great player at duke in the 1960s was associate Athletic Director and yet seen krzyweski coach and brought his name to tom butters. His answer was literally, who . He had never heard of him. He was an obscure young coach at army but he became enamored after interviewing him and decided to hire him even though he had been 917 at army. The headline in the Student Newspaper at duke the next day was, this is not a typo. Krzyweski. But jim valvano wrote to tom , butters, the coach at iona in new york, and had been very successful, 295 and wrote to butters about the duke job. The letter went through the coaching search and he was so impressed with the letter, he showed it to butters who sent it to willis casey, the Athletic Director at n. C. State. Nine days later, valvano is the head coach. Charlie you regret not writing the biography . John i do. I wanted to for many years but when i finally convinced them to do it in 2009, he was already in the middle stages of dementia. Not the last stages of dementia. We had two long sessions together. Two things happened. There were moments when he was still dean and i asked him how he met his first wife and he remembered it minute by minute and i asked him about bob spear, his first friend at air force academy, and he had no idea who he was. By the end of each session, i could see him getting very tired. I talked to his wife and to his son and we agreed that we cannot go forward. He was not in good enough shape to do it. I did get some things out of those interviews i was able to use in this book and deans wife pam, jims wife were very , helpful because i could not talk to dean or jim. Charlie what was the impact of these three guys in the 1980s . John dean smith was an icon by the time krzyweski by the time and valvano came along. Mike tells a great story about recruiting a kid in california named mike akers and realizing it was not going well. Mom,nally turned to his who had not said anything and said mrs. Akers, is there anything at all you want to know about our academics at duke . She said, no, i dont need to ask questions because the only thing is important that mike go to college somewhere where hes close to god. Duke, heif it comes to will be going down the road in chapel hill. [laughter] that is what they were dealing with when they first got down there. Dean won the National Title in 1982 and then valvano won the title in 1983. We all remember him running around the court in albuquerque. They barely got in the tournament. If they had not won the acc tournament, they went to the nit and jim mightve gotten fired. Thats the way he was thinking. When they won backtoback National Titles, krzyweski was sitting there. Lost the last game of the season to virginia. That night, i was with krzyweski that night in the dennys at 2 00 in the morning when the duke sid raised his glass and said heres to forgetting tonight and krzyweski raises his glass and said heres to never blanking forgetting tonight. He beat virginia the next 16 times they played. In 1991 when they finally won the National Championship and i walked on the court, congratulated mike, the first thing he said was, we have come a long way from the blanking dennys so he never did forget. Thats what he was up against. Charlie this is coach k on this program in 2010 talking about the Common Thread among the Great College coaches. I dont think any of those guys over coach, over talk. I think a competitive mind is like a glass. It can only you can only fill it so much. If u. S. A coach try to fill it with all that you know, you take away from it the players instincts. Youve got to fill it up to a certain point and then allow the player to fill it on his own. I think there is that combination. I think those coaches, whether they frame it that way or whatever, evoke that. Charlie how do they coach differently . What he said was fascinating. They were playing a game against carolina and he had talked in practice about not letting carolina cross a line. You dont let him them across that line on wednesday night. His pregame speech that night was he walked into the locker room, walked up to the white board and drew a line. He said lets go. That was it. That was his pregame speech. What has made mike for so many years is his flexibility. He changes constantly. He learns from failure which goes back to his days at west point. Two years ago, when they lost to mercer in the first round of the ncaa tournament, he did not whi ne and say his players were tolerable on defense. He said how do i get better and he started doing little things. He got on twitter so he could follow his players so he would know what they were thinking. He learned how to text so he could text the players on a regular basis. He decided to coach the one and done freshmen like they were seniors because they were seniors. They were never going to be sophomores. You cannot be patient until they learn mantoman defense. He had the place to his own. That was the only way for them to win last year and thats why they won last year because he had that flexibility. Dean was very system oriented. This is the way we do things, the passing game on offense, changing defenses on the other end of the court, always playing deep into the bench. Nobody pushed the ball better than dean smith. Charlie as recruiters . John again, krzyweski and dean are similar because they were selling the same thing. They were selling great liberal Arts Education and the tradition of their two schools because duke had a tradition before he got there. Dean built the tradition although Frank Maguire won the National Title in 1957 but they sold the tradition and the beauty of their campuses and what is like to be at a game. Valvano sold himself. Terry gannon tells a story about valvano coming to his home on a home visit. He didnt bring anything but himself and walked in the door and shouted at his father who was a High School Coach about how terrible is directions were and then sat down with his father and started helping him pick games. The deadline to bet on basketball. He went off and started picking games with his dad. By the time he walked at the door, terry and never seen n. C. State, and his death that you will go play for him. That was the way he sold it. Charlie this is dean smith in 1999 talking about what he loved about reading a basketball coach. I really did enjoy it teaching at the practice is more than anything. I enjoyed a tough ballgame where it was going to be a contest. I hated the games where the players, the fans, everyone thought we should win by 20. I knew the other team was dangerous. The joy also was the relationships that you have with the guys. In basketball in college, you change each year. Charlie dean smith, it reminds me of the story about george wallace, the governor of alabama said the only reason i am governor is because bryant does not want to be. John funny you should say that. In 1984, i was with dean smith on election day and he and i would always talk politics because our politics were similar, very liberal. Charlie unlike mike. John mike used to say you two liberal you know whats. Charlie where are the programs today . Dean smith and carolina, ranked four . Ranked third and they are a number one seed in the term it. Duke won a National Championship last year. They had a down year. What happened was tyus jones did not turn pro because they had a good tournament. Emil jefferson, their one good inside player got hurt and has been out since the ninth game of the system and they are not deep enough. They only have six players deepened they are still pretty good that they cannot defend the way Mike Krzyzewski can defend. Charlie will they make it to the top 16 . John maybe they will play , baylor and that will be tough. They can certainly do it. Carolina could win the National Championship. They better because two of their best players, Bryce Johnson and marcus paige are seniors and this investigation is finally winding up we dont know what will happen in april or may when the ncaa finally comes down with their results in this investigation, its the academic scandal. It is terrible. Especially for a program like carolina. Anybody who really loves College Basketball, cannot be happy to see this happening. Whats interesting about n. C. State is they have had some good teams since jim left in 1990. Pam valvano said that she believes that all four coaches followed jim have all coach in his shadow. Every year, we see the espy speech that jim gave eight weeks before he died. Every year we see him running around the court in albuquerque and he was young. Its very hard to get out of he became the room. He was so smart. Jim and dean were good friends. When jim was invited in 1993 before he died to throw out a first pitch at yankee stadium, he had always wanted to do that, he was too sick to travel. Steinbrenner said if you cant make it since someone in your place. And so, he had called dean smith and asked him to go. Dean was a yankee fan. Dean hated to be in public. You heard him talk, i love coaching, i love the practice. If he could have been beamed to the core and never done anything else he would have been happy. He went and throughout the first pitch. In their home were all sorts of pictures with dean with kids and coaches. There is only one picture of him alone, throwing out that first pitch. Charlie it is an amazing story. Back to where we are this year. We are on the eve of the march madness. What does it look like . John as wide as it has been in years. Can anybody be kentucky . The answer turned out to be yes. Duke beat wisconsin. But this year if you said that one team, i would say give me 10 choices. I might not pick the national champion. Michigan state is always a threat. Carolina has the most talent. I love the way virginia plays. Kansas is playing as well as anybody in the country is. I havent touched on the team who is going to win. Ingram is very good. Simmons will be the number one pick. Ingram will been the number two. He is that good. He is a teenager. He is a college freshman. He can shoot the three and put it on the floor. He will be a good nba player. Unfortunately he will be an nba player next year. That is what fascinating. He hates the one and done. Like dean, he is about relationships with the players. That is what he loves. Helping them grow. When he was First Recruiting he would fly home with a recruit after a visit so he could spend time alone with a recruit. He was always about those relationships. One and done, you cant do that. Charlie one last clip. What i hope i give my team is, they have a confidence level that i am the guy coordinating all this. They can use skills and i will be there to help them use their skills as well as they possibly can. I wont rob them of their instincts. Over the course of the year they just trust us. Players trust us. Charlie there is a great story about what he just said. John grant hill tells the story about coming off the court after kentucky took a lead and he is thinking i guess we are going on spring break. The first thing he says is were going to win the game. By the time they walked out they were convinced they were going to win and they did. That is what he is talking about. I am the facilitator. The best coaches, if the coach says to you you can win this game walking on your hands, you believe you can win these games. Charlie the book is called the legends club. I spent some time with jordan spieth. Tell me your impression of him . John he is 22 years old going on 40 when you talk to him. I laughed when i hear people say he doesnt do anything great. He does the two things that are most important better than anybody. He is the best putter in the world. He has the best mind. Tiger woods had the best mind. People overlook that. Jordan doesnt hit it as far as tiger. The old tiger. Not the current tiger who is not even playing. Charlie he said nobody is even remotely as good as he was. John i agree because i think at his dominant best from 1997 to 2008, when he won 14 majors, he won majors by 15, by 12, by eight. Nicklas didnt do that. He dominated the game in a way no one had. I get scared when i people say Rory Mcillroy is the next tiger. Jason days and. Nobody is not the next tiger. That is pretty darned good. Charlie what are they say about tiger now in terms of his physical side . John they say who knows. I dont think tiger woods knows if he is going to play. Everyone is waiting to see if he shows up again. Nobody is counting on it. That is a positive thing. The good thing for golf is for years there was concern what happens when tiger goes away. Is golf going to collapse completely . You have these three great players who are not only very good players, they are good guys. Charlie so, here is what is interesting about jordan, he was 54 under for the four majors. He said he doesnt think anyone will do that again. He doesnt expect 10 under to win the masters. John he shot 17 under and didnt win. I think it is the third greatest year in the history of golf. The greatest year, 2000 when tiger won by 15, the british open by 8 in the pga by five and finished off by winning the masters. Jordan, 2015, when the 2, it was third. That is how good it was. Charlie he also said people say when he is 15 feet, it is almost like everybody else being at five feet. He is that good. John totally. Charlie thank you for coming. Stay with us. Charlie a. O. Scott is here, the New York Times chief film critic. He has written a book. The los angeles time wrote his book is like watching the hero of a 1940s hero facing down his adversaries. I am pleased to have him back at this table. Welcome. A. O. great to be here. Charlie why did you write this . A. O. for a few reasons. I want to be reflective on what i do. I have written pieces about what i thought criticism is for. Why some people are mistaken when they think critics are the enemies of artists were out to spoil fun. It was more immediately because i began to notice a lot of predictions of my immediate extinction. The idea that we have amazon marketing algorithms, facebook and twitter. Everyone is a critic. Nobody needs to be professional anymore. I wanted to think about that anyway without prejudice, not just to celebrate the democracy of the internet but not to cry about how the sky is falling and how my job is going to be taken away and how standards are collapsing and the world is going to help. Maybe i can explain what criticism is. Why it is a part of our lives. What we talk about when we talk about the works of art we are interested in. Charlie you started as a book critic. A. O. i did. Almost 17 years ago. I think i started from an interest in criticism and migrated away from literature into film. Charlie who has informed your sense of criticism . A. O. there are a lot of writers who i grew up reading. Some criticism, its impossible to avoid the voice of pauline kale. She is a model for how to talk in a direct personal passionate way about popular culture. She has influenced film critics and people who write about music, television. I was influenced, migrant passion when i was an adolescent was popular music. Punk rock and the aftermath. Grill marcus was an enormous influence. He could take a song, and alban track, and open it up in a way and show how it was connected to all of these other things in the world and American History and modern culture and do it with a powerful, personal voice. He is still a strong role model. I have been on the show talking about him, roger ebert. He personifies criticism as a democratic arts. A person talking to other people. Someone who is knowledgeable but not snobbish, who is convinced of their own taste but willing to listen to other people. Whether he was on television or in the suntimes or in his book, he could speak about what he cared about in a way others would care about it. Charlie one criticism about criticism, from people who make films and write books, it is they say a critic suggested what was in their mind which was never there. A. O. i have a quote at the beginning of the book from oscar wilde who says the highest active criticism is to put into a work of art something the artist hadnt put there. I think that one of the fascinating things to me about all different kinds of works of art is how open they are to interpretation. Whether we are professional critics or not, when we see them and appreciate them, whether we like them or dont, we are filtering through our own personalities, our experiences and emotions. A critic is no different from anyone else. We do it in a way that is more public and trying to be of use to other people. Charlie do you think most artists say yes, that is right, or to most artists never agree with the criticism . A. O. it is interesting. I sometimes hear from filmmakers. Sometimes i get an email or a letter that says thank you. You understood what i was trying to do. They tend to say that when i have positive things to say. I like to think that i understood it just as well when i didnt like it. I think it varies. Artists take criticism to heart. They are either wounded by it or encouraged. Some people, some artists ignore it. I once asked joel and ethan cohen what they thought they dont like to interpret anything. And they are great to talk to but they say if we get good reviews maybe we sell more tickets. Charlie have you had artists saying you are absolutely right. I fail to do that. I knew i was not doing that. It was a struggle for me. It was a painful thing you pointed out but it was true. A. O. that does happen sometimes. Im touched when it does. I try not to be cruel or harsh. Not to be punitive. There are some things that are bad and cynical in a way that deserve to be called out and harshly scolded but a lot of the time most of the time, i proceed from the idea that no one was trying to make a bad movie. Someone was trying to do something good. I have heard, im not what name names, people have said i think that is right. We didnt quite nail the end of that story. We didnt have it as sharp as we could have. Charlie how much good criticism is good writing . A. O. a lot of it. Maybe all of it. That you need to be knowledgeable, you need to have good judgment that for me, the critics i love to read are not the ones i agree with but the ones whose voices i want to hear. The ones whose company i seek out. Charlie what i want to hear and a critic is a love of the arts that he or she is writing about. A. O. i think that is the key. It is so interesting to me that critics are often accused of the opposite. As if we could be motivated by a hatred or hostility. As if anybody could spend hundreds and thousands of hours in a Movie Theater doing that for the living because they hated movies. That would be a perverse approach to the world. I try to walk in and every critic i know does it with an open mind. An expectation or hope of being surprised. They criticize the movie they wanted me to make, not the movie i made. A. O. i have felt the a little bit reading reviews of this book. It has turned around a little bit. There have been a couple of reviews that i think that is an interesting account of some other book, the book you assumed i would have written. I think that is a risk that you take sometimes. I think it is something to try to struggle against. I dont think you can never entirely overcome that risk of imposing your own expectations on the work but you do try. I think that every critic im no and respect does try to see the thing for what it is, to figure out what it is trying to do, whether it lived up to its intentions, whether the intentions were worthy. That is where you have to begin, with the sense of what is this . Charlie how often do you write a review of the film and you look and almost everybody else, including people you respect had a different view and you ask yourself what did i miss here . That is one of my favorite things about criticism. It is still my favorite thing about reading other critics. The longest chapter in this book is how to be wrong. One of the things critics do for one another is take positions that can be disagreed with. I love reading writers that i respect saying things, 180 degrees away from where i am. It doesnt make me doubt myself so much as think that moving must be interesting. Only an interesting movie could inspire such opposite and strongly held views. Anyway when we stop arguing about works of art is when we begin to lose interest in them. When they begin to die a little bit. Charlie here is something you wrote. A primal feeling of alienation or loss in the universe and confusion about our identity. A. O. that is what art sets out to do. To explain to ourselves what it is to be human. The puzzle and the mystery, and the sense of loss and alienation. What are we, what are we doing . I think that the representations of the human condition, that we put under the category of art, they are what also inspire us to the act of criticism. We have to figure out what those things were. Someone wrote a column that is showing us something about Human Emotions and human thoughts and feelings. Then we have to figure what they meant. What that all means. It is part of this endless human project and the way of making sense of who we are and where we are. Charlie this is not a great movie but i loved it . A. O. i think so. I try to bring those things into alignment as much as i can. There are movies, a few movies that maybe are not on formal or aesthetic grounds perfectly achieved masterpieces. Charlie but something entertaining. Its a notion that somebody does popular culture. It is the definition of doing popular coulter, they do it well. A. O. and sometimes what it is done well it can rise to the level of art. One of my favorite movies last year was creed, a great movie and a wonderful piece of popular entertainment. I had a good time in 2015 at furious seven. No one will say it is a masterpiece of cinema but it had such conviction, such audacity and was so generous with its audience. It was saying to the audience, lets have a good time. Lets drive these cars off the skyscrapers. A good movie should have some kind of human connection. Whether it is fantasy or Science Fiction or superhero movie or comedy. It should have some cord of human authenticity where there is some feeling or situation that i can recognize. Charlie art should somehow speak to you and Say Something to you that you somehow deep inside feel but have not been able to give inspiration to. A. O. it is that recognition. You see a situation. Charlie and you know the pain. A. O. for the laughter. Charlie for sure. The oscars. You said im a credit, intent on punishing artists. Let me put that up with you. A snob, that is the role that calls the public to play. I would like to say forget about the oscars. A. O. that was before the oscars i wrote that. They were a fascinating show for sure this year. I thought what chris rock did in difficult circumstances was pretty fantastic. It was magical. The academy put itself into this situation where they were deservedly being called out for manifesting the narrowness and exclusiveness, and homogenate of hollywood. The lack of inclusion. Charlie the criticism is the nature of the academy itself. A. O. i think that is a big problem. The academy does reflect the larger film industry. It is attached to the bigger problem of fewer opportunities for filmmakers and riders and actors of color, and women. The more attention brought to that, the better. Also the academy has a problem of having a narrow act to idea of what is quality, what is prestige. What are the movies we want to show as our superior product. They leave out interesting movies that dont fit that narrative. Again, this is not a judgment of the movies. I admired quite a few of them. I love spotlight, brooklyn. I liked room. I love the performances. But, i think they never have room for comedy. They dont have room for movies that are connected with some of the more youthful and diverse energies within the popular culture. They couldnt see the artistry of creed. It is a boxing movie, a rocky movie. I happen to think it is a remarkable drama. It is up to the standards of all of the nominees last year. It is ok. People like that movie and people embrace that movie. The movie will be all right. But the oscars, if they want to have any kind of claim on relevance or public attention, they need to figure out how to inform what they are doing. Charlie a. O. Scott is the chief critic at the New York Times. Better living through criticism is the title of the book. Thank you. A. O. thank you. Great to be here. Charlie thank you for joining us. See you next time. Announcer the following is a paid advertisement for time lifes music collection. These are songs that can relax and soothe you. 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