In revolt. I am pleased to have him at this table. Welcome. Congratulations on a mammoth undertaking. Knowing your background, it has been the focus of your life, why this now . Scott i have been reporting from the middle east for 25 aars, and i feel have reached crisis throughout the region now. Haverab spring revolutions transformed into something else. This is a Pivotal Moment to look at something that is happening throughout the region. Charlie lets look exactly at what happened. What caused the arab spring to happen . Scott so throughout the middle east, going back to, in some ways, to world war i, this is a colonial wars drawn after world war i, you had an entire region that really existed in a kind of political stagnation, a real stasis. And one thing after another, longterm dictators had been in power. One had been in power for 42 years. What actually triggered the arab spring, certainly a huge influence was the American Invasion of iraq in 2003. That represented a scrambling of the chessboard. Time, in goodst ways as bad, i think the American Invasion of iraq, it brought what was possible to the region. Totalitarian regimes collapsed, and what would take their place . Charlie we still dont know the answer to that question, do we . Scott we are starting to know, but it is not good. Charlie lets take libya. We have a lot of tribes there a government is trying to support, but is not sure. It is not sure. Do for stability . We are engaged with the battle against isis in libya. Scott libya is a great example of what happened. Libya is one of the socalled artificial states. It was created along with iraq and syria. Charlie when we say who created them, clearly it was the brits. And the french. Scott in libyas case, the italians. So you join together with these ottomanst under the had largely very little to do with one another. They joined together these artificial states, and for a long time, at the end of world war ii, things kind of went along. They had these western allied monarchs. And then in the late 1940s, early 1950s, you start seeing these totalitarian regimes come into power, dictators. Libya. Iraq, gaddafi in so really what those strong individuals, along with looking out for their own power, was they were trying to create a National Identity in places that did not have a strong want to begin with. Egypt is a separate thing. They have a National Identity going back millennia. They kind of worked as long as those strong hand dictators are in power. When they get overthrown, what takes their place . Charlie that was a great quote someone else had. Great thesein way he is because iraq is the way it is, or is iraq the way it is because of the way Saddam Hussein is . Scott so there was the first invasion in 2003, what takes their place . You have rubberstamped parliaments in places. What filled the void was a tribal allegiance, clan allegiance, sectarian allegiance. And when the americans went into iraq, they had no clue what they were walking into. That there would be this withering out along these lines. Charlie did they even raise the question . Scott that is a good question. People that knew something about iraq at the time, i think they raised the issue, and they were brush to the side. They were considered unpatriotic for suggesting this to be anything other than a cakewalk. We would be greeted as liberators. Charlie that is what dick cheney said, what we have been waiting for, there we did for us to come in. They are waiting for us to come in. It is a lesson the americans did not really learned. No matter how tyrannical dictator is, people in general do not like being invaded. Charlie if somebodys going to decide, they like to decide. Lets just go through all of them. Tunisia, there was the spark that created the arab spring. Scott that is right, it was a young fruit seller was being harassed by the local government. He set himself on fire in the process and died rum it. That set off right at the beginning of 2011, all these protests that led to the overthrow of the president of tunisia who had been in power for 23 years. And then it spread to egypt, libya, to syria. It spread, it spread throughout the region. Yemen it spread very quickly. Today, i would say the one bright spot in the entire region is you look at the happy ending is tunisia. A Fragile Coalition government, but they seem to have consolidated. ,harlie what is the impact what is the possibility of secularism . What is the possibility of shiasunni split . Can you have an islamic democracy . Are the answers, or is it sadly too early . Simply too early . Scott the tunisians have been very smart about this. You also have to start looking country by country. There is certain currents that are common. , syria, andt libya iraq and see a lot of commonality leading up to the arab spring. The nature of the dictatorships that were going on for decades prior. But i think in other places, it is hard to sort of say a catchall thing of where it is heading. , itainly egypt, to my mind was initially very optimistic about the arab spring. I thought that for the first time, people are channeling their rage against the dictators , where it should always have been directed. And for me, where i saw the arab spring go south collectively was two years after the overthrow of [indiscernible] , you had the first democratically elected president of Mohamed Morsi in the muslim brotherhood. He made some mistakes, but he had been democratically elected. Two years on, good people taken into the street, some of the same that overthrew the other guy, now people take to the street. They want to overthrow Mohamed Morsi. So what had they learned in two years . You are again asking the military to overthrow the government, this is not government democratic. That was an object if you see this part of the world through western eyes, you are headed for disappointment. Charlie how do you see it through arab eyes . Scott it is impossible if you are a westerner. Charlie but you cant see it through their eyes, but you can ask them what their eyes see. Scott in this article, my main the, the injected egyptian subject is a woman who has been living with this going back to the 1970s. The one man was overthrown, she saw the paralysis against the legitimate political parties, that they were not stepping forward to seize power and consolidate the democracy. They were just kind of waiting, waiting for big brother to tell them what to do. Big brother in egypt has always been the military. A wasn after we bought overthrown even after the man was overthrown, charlie military stepped in. They were appointed behind the president. Scott behind morsi. There was a year of the military ruling through elections until morsi came in. Charlie what do you think will happen with the cc government . Scott i was just in egypt 3, 4 months ago. I dont think anything good. I think it is heading for a real problem. Undemocratic. Scott it is so authoritarian. Far more political presence. Economically, the country is in the shambles. And you were talking about laila that maybe anw is internal palace coup, they will bring in another journal general who is more userfriendly. But barring that and some steps she sees things much more violent than Tucker Square of 2011. Charlie for your arab eyes in libya who are your arab eyes in libya . Scott an amazing young man from a coastal city, about 100 miles from tripoli. He has this amazing story. He was an air force cadet in the gaddafi air force when the revolution started in libya. He and his fellow cadets, 18 and 19yearold students were kept in quarantined for 18 months. While the country was being torn apart, the west was doing airstrikes, he had no idea what was happening in his country. All he had been hearing was from ,he regime that is western western paid mercenaries and criminals who are doing this. Months, gaddafis military people came to him and said, we need to do a special patriotic mission. Go back to this stronghold of the rebellion and find out who the rebel leaders are and identify the force so we can kill them. Crossed nohis. He mans land, went back to his hometown only to discover that everybody was the rebels. Everything he had been told for three months was a lie, even his own family was with the rebellion. So he did this kind of amazing he wasgainst the regime supposed to work with and then join the let rebels. And today, he is just trying to pick up the pieces of his life. Libya is headed for, as bad as the situation is right now politically or militarily right is aboutomically it to hit a wall. It will run out of money in about a year or two. Their whole, all of their hard currency reserves are being, they are running through them. By 2017, they will run out of money. That has been the bandaid that has kept everyone is on the government payroll, even the militias in libya. As long as this is getting doled out, this is money from the government, it has kept a little in place. That will end very soon. Charlie what are the chances of them coming together with a strong, Central Government . Scott i think, no. Think oncet once, i a place like libya tears apart, it is very hard libya is, ok, it does have a sectarian issue. Sunni, shia. But what you do have is centuries of these different cities most existing as city states, going back to greek and roman times. So libya is this interesting case in it is always a bit fractious, even in the duffys time gaddafis time. He would meet people from benghazi. That has all kind of ended. Charlie the notion that the people who fuel, who were there on the land i was in that square, the people who were there on the street, who were leading the rebellion were not, for example, tunisian, muslim brotherhood, they grafted onto it. In other parts. Scott that is right. Also replace you look, syria is a good example. The urban elite, the educated urban charlie part of the original urban core rebel core. They took to social media to enhance their ranks and their strength. Scott that is right. You see it replicated throughout the region. Necessaryhis is not in your reporting, and i have not read about it because i did not know about it before this show, but what has been the impact of those people who were there, those young people who, because of media, realize they were living in a place which was a dictatorship or a place which was not offering educative opportunities. They are young, and this was simply not a good place in comparison to the rest of the world. Scott when you say what caused the arab spring, that was a huge factor of the explosion of social media and the dictators, maybe with the exception of north korea, you cant bottle up your people anymore. Charlie they can talk to each other. Scott they can. It is interesting, i had a syria, a college student, very westernized. Of things about the outside world, and yet out under the new a lot of things about the outside world, and get he has never had a political discussion. I said, what is your father [indiscernible] he said, i dont know, we never talked about it. The fear of the secret police ,as so pervasive, he said maybe, the most you would ever criticize the government, and this was at a dinner table, inside the family, you might talk about traffic. That was as far as you go. You would never criticize the regime. Of course, this also played into with these places exploded. Egypt was never as much as iraq or syria, and when all of a sudden this strongman is in trouble or gets overthrown, kids who have been talking to each other, there is no consensus to do next. Charlie dictators would say, we take care of the government, and you let us handle the government part, we will take care of the power, but we will make sure you are ok. Scott right. Compact really started to fall apart. And as you say, with social media, anybody i talked to egyptians were aware of what happened in tunisia. Libyans were aware of what happened in egypt, syrians were aware of what happened in libya. It had this cascading effect in 2011, because you cant keep this information offlimits anymore. Charlie what do you think will happen in syria . Scott nothing good, nothing good. I sometimes think of syria the way i thought about lebanon for a long time. It is so balkanized internally, but you also have all of these in upside players outside players, how do you ever decouple all of the forces that have a vested interest in the status quo or in keeping the country in chaos. I just dont see, i have a really hard time seeing syria a exist at the end of this, but i dont see the fighting ending in probably a decade. I just think this goes on and on. Charlie a kind of deadlock. Sense, assad depending on the russians and hezbollah. And the iranians depending on the United States, saudi arabia. Scott you have a coalition against isis. For the first time, you do have its peers. You do have a coalition that is really working. At the same time, if you just look at one player in that whole coalition, turkey, turkey so much of the power isis enjoys today is because of it turkey. So it is a deliberately porous border to allow isis people to come and go because they have other geopolitical concerns, the kurds. Then you look at the americans, the americans need the turks in other ways. So what do we do about them, the border policy . You have all these hidden bendas, and what looks to overt and obvious charlie coalition against isis. Charlie and what you see today in todays paper is russians now coming back, coming back, or to ogan isall of the erd putting down a two. One of his new friends is now putin. Scott who would have guessed . Charlie it is amazing when you see in iraq, you see people in some cases, the iranians and the americans are on the same side. They want to defeat isis. Here on the same side there. And the shia government is on the same side. But the tribal groups because they are sunni have been in the past supporting isis because they had been so badly treated bya shia government, backed iran. So there is a shifting , to go on withst what you were saying about iraq, one of my subjects is on iraqi kurd, and hisqi ultimate goal is he wants a kurdistan free of arabs. He was an all kurdish nation. Wants and all kurdish nation. Iraqi, iuy, sunni interviewed him in a secret prison being held by kurds, and just to get to the complexities to say i asked the captors, they say, why havent you handed him back to iraq, they say we dont trust iraqis. Guys back tois iraq, either they kill him or dont get information, or they are high enough up in isis they can bribe. So you think of two people who should be absolutely charlie people who are supportive of isis will pay money to get them back. Scott they dont even trust a shia government with sunni isis gunmen, because the corruption and all of the secret dealing also,e this in syria alliances between different cities, between alawites, loyalists in isis or some other islamic fundamentalist group. Know,ssible, you arrangement. Charlie will iraq and up in some kind of apartheid situation . Scott i think so. I think so. What the kurds have enjoyed since 1972 with the Kurdistan Regional government in the operation of hazard storm were that created this enclave desert storm where they created this enclave, since 1972, the kurds have been part of iraq. They are not considered a part of iraq. Americans will let them declare independence, but in their minds, they are independent. That is all you can do in iraq, that you can create for the sunnis, which are also a minority. Nnistan Regional Government like you have for the kurds now. And you could share oil receipts , you could continue to refer to it as a nation in name, but i have a hard time seeing how the into anill ever go back arrangement with shia and vice versa. There has been so much sectarian focus, and the suspicions at this point are just not, cant be bridged. Charlie what do they think of the United States . Scott it is a great question. The classic thing that they look to the west, look to the United States as a kind of global arbiter, but i think that throughout the region, there is a consensus that the americans are unreliable, that they are charlie cant depend on them. Scott cant depend on them. Charlie that has sometimes been described to the saudis as well, because of the red line and of the price. And topping it up on the iranians. Toughening up on the iranians. Scott and the american Attention Span is very short. See you came in iraq, you took the place apart, it did not quite work out the way you thought, and then you leave. The vietnam analogy with iraq i remember people were making the vietnam analogy with iraq before the iraq war had even started. And it has kind of played that way. And how that plays to americas mies is again, just like this notion that you can lead americans out. Play a waiting game, eventually the americans will get tired and leave. I think that has always been, and that part of the region charlie lose interest. Afghanistan, but is what happens in afghanistan. We helped the russians, and then we let it, when it became, a state controlled by the taliban. Juliette scott that is right. Charlie so what should be the role of the United States than . Scott at this point, it is funny when people talk about the administrations policy. I dont think there is a policy. Administratione is reactive to events, to the next sort of explosion that comes along. That said, i am not sure what a forwardlooking proactive policy would look like at this point. Libyaabsolutely see that is going to get worse again. What i worry about with libya is that, that has some american attention right now because they are trying to cinch off isis in the center of the country. That may be successful. It looks like it is going to be. What happens then . I fear that the west, and particularly in the United States say, ok, our job here is done, and then libya the cascade right. Charlie pivot to asia, maybe even latin america. In places where we can have more impact. Make a real difference. Then we can in the middle east. Scott it is very hard to see. We were talking about egypt. Despises thee Obama Administration. They see him as weak. They also, [indiscernible] a huge part of what overthrew the over guy was he was seen as the americans lapdog. He was on the american payroll for 27 years. He i have never met an addiction get who i have never met an egyptian get who has not seen him as americas most reliable ally or whoever saw the 2 billion as anything other than a national shame. Our president is being bought. Thing thate worst can happen to him is to be seen being patted on the head by the americans. The sad thing about the way this , twoaying out in egypt now of her children are in prison for protesting against the government. They are trying to appeal through amnesty international. What they realized, and this is true for tens of thousands of routecal prisoners, that of going through the west, which usually worked for mubarak. Counterproductive. If the americans want this, all the more reason to not budge. You never want to be seen as the americans lapdog. Charlie in terms of influence, where do you put the iranians . Scott it usually depends on what happens in syria. I think you are absolutely right, there has been this calculation made in the Obama Administration that we need the iranians and we need an unofficial alliance. They have a role to play. A huge role in iraq. A major role in the coalition against isis. With the administrations assad goes that if and things get worse, that increases the iranian influence. This,e i can tell you from the people i have talked to, it is clear they have to be part of the solution in syria. Absolutely. Russians, iranians. Influence in iraq. There is no counterbalance to their behavior. Crazy. Es saudi arabia they want to counterbalance the asnians because they view it a mortal enemy and a struggle for diplomacy. Scott i have always suspected that part of the nuclear deal, there was a sub agreement of recognizing how much the americans needed the iranians in the region. Much better to have some sort of rapprochement them to let them go on with what ever they wanted to do and to be caught unaware by it. Charlie congratulations on the article. The story of the arab spring, looking at what it might have been and what it became and what it might be. Early on, they were calling it the arab winter. Scott anderson. Back in a moment. Charlie jeremy is there, the founder director of stanford interaction virtual lab. He is a cofounder of strieber labs, a company used by football teams to train athletes with Virtual Reality experiences. Welcome. Talked an this program couple of times about Virtual Reality. Tell us what it is and why it is important. Jeremy it is a medium that puts you inside of a medium. Body, theving your sites and the sounds and the touch change as a function of how you move. In the physical world, every time you move, there is a perceptual reaction that is appropriate. It feels like you are actually doing something. For the first time in human history, people are going to be able to hit a button and have any experience you can fathom. Go to the top of kilimanjaro, experience something wonderful, experience something horrible at the touch of a button. The brain will treat it like a real experience. We have not yet evolved to understand the difference between a compelling Virtual Reality experience and a real one. Charlie how is it you can do that . Jeremy we have releasing the Tipping Point in the last year or two years. We have had very large industry bring in billions of dollars with hundreds and hundreds of engineers. Tracking your body movements or having light visual displays, there is real Energy Behind it. Charlie how will it be used in the future . Jeremy all of the Tech Companies are competing to get the best hardware, the best software. Earlier thating me you have tried it. You really did not know, what are you going to do with this . When the tech moguls come to me and to my lab, figuring out what works in terms of the brain and what applications are good cases for it. Charlie the capacity of the human brain will ignite the whole experience. At the given take we can produce something that works perfectly for the brain. What media experiences do you want to feel real . A keynote address to the tribeca film festival, dont ruin movies with Virtual Reality. Not everything that is good on film will translate into an experience that feels real. Charlie suppose you would put us inside of fire. You cannot feel the heat. Jeremy there have been psychology experience where people show great physiological reactions. When a scene reacts to your movements, or mechanisms of the brain do not know how to respond to it. Charlie the brain is obviously conditioned by what it has seen and done before. Jeremy that is right. Charlie that is a Reference Point for the brain. Jeremy given a fire that looks , the smart real response is to treat it like real. Charlie if it is not the obvious thing is storytelling. Jeremy i do not think that is the obvious thing. Place isone adaptable storytelling. You probably want to deal with human challenges and problems more than altering storytelling. Jeremy there is this thing called the director and she is a brilliant person who tells you where to look by moving the camera. Vr, that happens with you. I am looking over here because there is cool lighting over here. You get to do what ever you want to do whatever you want. Charlie give me something give me an example of something in the next five years that will benefit humankind. Jeremy training athletes. The first time i build a quarterback training simulation, i showed that to the stanford coach. He looked around, took it off. Typically, somebody says, i can see how that will be cool in the future. The coach said, can we have this tomorrow . Practice is expensive. You have to have all these people on the field. They know how to throw a ball. What they need is extra repetitions. Training someone to make decisions under a rousing situation. You have military training because practice, you should be able to make mistakes in practice. Charlie so you will not make them in reality. Jeremy that is why they have flight simulators because lives are expensive and so warplanes. And so are planes. Take carson palmer, he has a system and has some. He looks around, reads his defense. Again and again and he does not need his teammates on the field. Charlie can you use it in golf and tennis . Jeremy lets talk about free throw shooting. We teach them to visualize success. Imagine you were much better and your shot going in perfectly. When you are in a slump, that is hard to do. You visualize failure. They put the helmets on and they watch themselves from the third person succeeding. Charlie how do you see it . Lets assume this is Virtual Reality and you are me and i am seeing this as i take free throws . Jeremy you see yourself from the third person. You get to look around or walk around and see yourself being perfect. It is not just visualizing, it is taking all of the guesswork out of it and letting you see yourself. Charlie how would it be applicable to medicine . Jeremy we just published a paper about pain medicine. Aronic regional pain is horrible disorder. The way to make it better is to move the limb. You do physical therapy, you move the bad lamb. The bad limb. The second thing the first thing we do is give them a distraction. The second thing we do, we inspire selfefficacy, the believe you can do something. You look down and you see your avatar in the first person. When you move your arms, your avatars arms move. Degrees, you 10 see it move 20 degrees. You see your virtual arm move more than your actual arm. I think it might have been Mark Zuckerberg saying this is the next great platform. Do you see it as the next great platform . I am not sure it was mark. But i think it was. It is great for experience ondemand. Having any experience that makes you feel special. That differs from the big Tech Companies and their vision is being a platform because they want you to use their media all day long. Thinke how does facebook it will use it . Jeremy Mark Zuckerberg came to timeb and we spent some together before he purchased oculus. One thing we really resonated on was this idea of empathy. You become someone else and you get to walk a mile in their shoes. Mark zuckerberg cares a lot about issues of inequality and poverty. Charlie this is called a diversity mirror and it shows how walking in someone elses shoes creates authentic empathy and the user. Jeremy this is somebody seeing themselves in a virtual mirror. The subject is physically moving in the room and avatars are moving with him. He gets to see himself moving. We are inducing body transfer. It has been shown, if you move around physically and see your , after aboutmove four or five minutes, the brain incorporates this mirror image into your body scheme of meaning. Lots of research and great publications showing this. Been leveraging this body transfer to empathy. You feel like this is you in the mirror. Please start this again. He bends down, he comes up, and he is a woman of color. We repeat the body transfer. Charlie you are in the shoes of a person of color. Experience first verbal abuse and physical abuse while mocking while walking a mile in someone elses shoes. The brain is treating it like it is you. You experience prejudice and some physical violence to resonate what it means to be harassed. Charlie this shows how inhabiting a superhero experience can engender empathy and every day circumstances. Jeremy there is a large literature on media modeling. We want to teach helping as a skill. We created an intense and a rousing experience. You swerve your body around buildings, very engaging. Astronauts say it is the closest. Hey have been to space it is a really intense experience. It is an amazing part of vr. In this study, we had people fly like a hero and eventually, they save a childs life. They have to deliver medicine to a child who has been abandoned in the city. Have an actor fake an accident. We are testing to see if this virtually Learned Behavior transfers to what they believed to be a real accident. People become more helpful when they have had a virtual altruism experience. It causes them to be more responsive and the physical world. Charlie was facebooks purchase of oculus a confirming credential for Virtual Reality . Somebodyomebody said, visible, public, vr is worth billions. That was a big moment. Vr isuckerberg decides worth 2. 3 billion, it sends a signal to a lot of the other companies. Efforts get accelerated. Charlie 2012, you cowrote a book, and it was called infinite reality. The virtual jeremy when i arrived at 2003, getting tenure at stanford requires you to focus in on an idea and i wanted to study how the technology affects people. Mental processes and social interaction. The Virtual Human Interaction Lab because it was not about the tech. Training. Hologist by on the book title, youll have to ask harpercollins. Listened to me. The initial title was going to be more human than human. In Virtual Reality, you can do things like becoming a hero or change your race. Charlie i like more human than human, myself. When you look at the cutting edge and in terms of what these companies every company has to look at this because as you said, it can accelerate the development of human experience. Jeremy we have the privilege of working in silicon valley. Door ofa revolving ceos of these big Tech Companies that come to learn, not about the hardware, but what do we do with this . The answer is not always clear. We host visits from apple, samsung, sony, google. They are all trying to figure out the best applications to use the technology. Charlie what kind of company would you create. Jeremy i have created a company about sports training. A lot of my work is about the environment and how you can use vr to this really teach people people about teach climate change. Citizens do not have a direct experience with things like floods and droughts and things caused by climate change. One of my lines of research is about using vr to show them how humans are changing the climate. The best things we can do as citizens is to use less energy and fossil fuels. If i were to form a company, i would try to do whatever i could to reduce travel and the best way to do that is to perfect at some point, in my new book, there is a chapter called the virtual handshake. Maybe you commute to work one day a week. If i can create a Virtual Reality experience that makes it contact, the handshake, that is something special. Charlie how will it be used in education jeremy . I am the director of the stands third stanford Digital Learning forum. I have been trying to shift that to a field trip. I do notnkvr think vr should replace the classroom. Done one i am very proud of. To teachd in happens withwhat the ocean. We are going to bring a whole system to the senate floor and get to show a number of senators and other people in washington this fiveminute field trip that teaches the Science Behind acidification. Once that is done and we are finished with the perfect product, we will give it to the world. Charlie qa for coming. Thank you for coming. Thank you for joining us, see you next time. Mark with all due respect to anybody else, uncle joe is back, baby. Nobody doubts that i mean what i say. This is not hyperbole. I really mean it. All kidding aside. Maybe it is just me. Let state the obvious. That boy, he married up. Sorry, guys. [laughter] i became the obama whisperer. This is not a joke. This is real