Interest in this, a neurosurgeon, neuroscience, expert, genius at barnes jewish right up the street. And hes, you know, in his 40. I think he has more than 80 patents to his name. He had a robust neurosurgery practice. Hed written a Science Fiction novel. I mean, he was one of these guys that was just incredible. And the first thing that i was planning to do was a magazine story. I was going to do kind of a quick thing. I was writing journalism everywhere, and it seemed hike a great mag teen magazine like a great magazine article. He worked to find the root of any epileptic seizure. And what he started doing, and this case, actually, was not an epilepsy case. It was a tumor. And it wasnt a well defined tumor. It was one of these tumors that kind of grows throughout the brain. And so at the surgery, you know, the patient goes down, the guy goes down, and hes anesthetized. Eric opens his head. And in the middle of the surgery, eric wakes him up. And the guy is, you know, kind of dazed and wondering where he is, and then he, and then he erics, the surgical assistant is asking eric or asking the guy, you know, about the most mundane things. Hes asking him about his job, and hes asking him about how the cardinals are doing and what they like to do on their weekends and things like this. But the whole idea was that he wanted the man to keep talking because as eric was pulling away at the tumor, as he was taking out this cancer, he wanted to make sure that he wasnt encroaching on any of the Language Centers in the brain. And so as the guy was talking about, you know, stocking the shelves at the grocery store, and he couldnt remember the name for peas, eric would realize that, no, i need to back off of this section. And to me, it was an incredible moment for me. It was, you know, i think i had some kind of illformed notions of what makes a personality and what makes us who we are and how we communicate. But here he was kind of working with the biological matter of what we are, and he was able to, you know, manipulate that, talk about that. And not only was he able to work with the actual substance of the brain itself, but he was able to pull using electrodes thoughts out of the brain. And that, to me, all of a sudden, you know, all of these, you know, philosophical questions, intellectual questions, biological questions, you know, come rushing to the fore. And i pretty quickly realized that, you know, the magazine piece had to be scrapped and that this was a much bigger piece, you know . And what, i mean, one of the things that i think, you know, youre looking at Something Like the brain, and youre looking at, you know, this kind of poorly understood, mysterious object that, you know, we never see but is us, you know, its really kind of a difficult thing to say, well, where do you get a story about this . I mean, a lot of the questions are really interesting, but how do you keep it, how do you make it into a story . How do you make it into a book that somebody like me would want to read . How do you get it to, you know, whats the narrative setting that youre really looking for here . You know, because, i mean, its well and good to go to surgeries and talk about these intellectual issues, but, you know, the brain is really a black box. So i started calling around and started speaking with people that were deep in this field, you know, among them ted berger whos a neuroscientist out of ucla. And ted is, i mean, all of these guys are always the smartest guy in the room, but ted works with memory, and hes building a digital prosthesis for memory. And so, basically, what he will do is hell disable the hippocampus which is kind of an older brain structure which is critical to the formation of memories, and hell be able to disable that. And then he will, using electrodes, read the neural signals that are coming into the hippocampus, and hell then ferry those out to a computer. And ted is a mathematician and neuroscientist, but what hell end up doing is hes crafted what he believes to be kind of a master algorithm of memory. And so what he can do is bring these incoming signals into his algorithm, and that will actually spit out outgoing signals that mimic the same signals that the hippocampus would create. And hell offload those into areas of the brain to form memories. You know, other people were working in visual prosthetic, so prosthetics of the optics. You know, some directly on the visual cortex as opposed to similarly in the simply in the eye. One person was working with a pallet that youd actually place on a tongue pa let that allowed people to see, it would basically be a video camera that would scan the area and that would send small signals to the tongue which is this, you know, warm, moist, you know, highly sensitive area. And the brain is plastic enough that it will actually take those signals and interpret them after time as visual information. And so people are able to the rock climb and hike is and play soccer, blind people, with this. So theres just a tremendous, i mean, all of these things are wonderful and really interesting. But what you come up against is, you know, how to you avoid this becoming just this, you know, huge catalog of heres this Interesting Research, and heres this Interesting Research . I wanted a story, and i wanted something that really kind of brought the stakes of whats happening home. And thats about the time that i met miguel who is one of the top guys in the field. And he works, he works all over the field in terms of motor and, you know, other sensory areas. But miguel at the time was whispering about this new neural prosthetic that would bind the brains of multiple animals and create what he called a braintobrain interface. So this kind of multiorganism creation that would be a cyborg network. He was also working with bringing in infrared visual information and allowing animals to see other areas of the spectrum that they otherwise would not be able to see. So he was doing really edgy, really a lot of people would say Science Fiction, crazy stuff. But he also said that everybody in the field was an amateur and that he was really the only guy that really had, you know, the straight dope on [laughter] bci. And that, to me, i mean, thats a telling moment, right . Because all of a sudden you realize, oh, its not one big, happy family. And it was around that time that i ran into Andrew Schwartz. And Andrew Schwartz is another one of these top guys. And andrew was at the time working, he still is, working on motor. And he was working with, you know, trying to reproduce fluid, dexterous movement in a robotic arm that would mimic an approach, the grace of the human body. Hed had incredible i wont say luck, results. And andrew, you know, hes one of these guys that doesnt, hes unswayed by social charms. And hes interested in measurables, and hes interested in results. And hes interested in science. And so i really kind of kept quiet around andy a lot. But learned a tremendous amount from him. And one of the things he said was that everybody in the field doesnt know what theyre talking about. And so at this point i kind of started to realize, you know, here are these two top guys, and they have these diametrically opposed ideas, well, at least of each other. So all of a sudden this kind of narrative architecture of how i can tell this story and how i can enter into these, you know, kind of rich intellectual questions and biological questions and evolutionary questions and philosophical questions and some pretty, you know, high flying neuroscience along the way, that this would act as a real bridge to be able to talk about that. You know . And so what i wanted to kind of concentrate was on this fierce Competition Among these, you know, top neuroscientists for prestige, intellectual, you know, morals and, you know, ultimately fame. And i think a lot of them would believe, you know, the ultimate prize, and thats the nobel. You know, of course, that makes it a very difficult thing to report, because all of these guys have multimillion dollar lab, and labs, and if its thursday, theyre going to be in korea. So its just a hard way to get into it. But once you actually get into that upper running, you know, youre never two, three, four questions away from talking with these top guys and asking a question and them saying, i have no idea. We just dont know. And thats really where we are with the brain. I mean, theres so many questions that we have so many, you know, titillating and exciting, minute windows on to this vast neural galaxy. And yet we still dont know basic, basic things. In the book at one point andrew says, you know, we want to do all of this, but we dont know the first thing about why a neuron fires, and thats the basic, thats how it all starts. And so, you know, but one of the kind of grand ironies of this, of this and what i thought was kind of an interesting way to go about it, you have this clash of titans, you have these incredibly ambitious men and they are mainly men who are working with the weakest among us. Theyre working with paraplegics and quadriplegics and lockedins and people who have had brain stem strokes and, you know, these people have, you know, theyre not really interested in these big Science Fiction questions. Theyre interested in being able to feed themselves and, you know, take care of their daily business. Theyre interested in just getting to normal. And the truth is, is that most of these people will never actually benefit from this technology. Were really in this beginning portion of this race. And, you know, so theyre going into this with no real thought about, you know, how this is going to affect them, how its going to help them. Theyre really, i mean, theyre undergoing voluntary brain surgery with the expectation that it will help future generations. You know . So its, you get this kind of crazy juxtaposition of this, you know, multimillion dollar project, you know, huge egos, incredible, you know, incredible science, and then these, you know, incredibly fragile people. And theyre all working together. You know, in a sense theyre all working together for this, what i would say is, you know, this very kind of fundamentally human story. And thats, you know, harnessing technology to make us more of what we already are. Harnessing this technology to make us more human. And that, to me, you know, its this quest. And i think its, you know, it gets into some very, you know, heady issues, and theres lots of ways to kind of, you know, approach this question. But i think that, ultimately, you know, where this goes is this kind of quest for, you know, betterment and for bettering who we are. You know . Because, i mean, its very easy to get into kind of, you know, Science Fictional questions of, you know, where, you know, where were going to have google in our brain, and were going to have neurallyimplanted cars and things like that. And that may happen. [laughter] that absolutely may happen. But one of the researchers i was speaking with said, you know, we know weve arrived when were doing the most normal, mundane things with this, brushing our teeth, combing our hair, being able to call people. You know, thats really what a lot of these people are working with. And so i think that that was kind of, you know, where thats really what the storys about. I mean, its about neuroscience and its about all of these other questions, but its also about, you know, kind of, you know, the people that are engaged, deeply, deeply engaged in these questions, you know, out of this fundamental human need. And so in any case, thats kind of a little bit about what my thinking in terms of how i put the book together and what i wanted the book to be. You know, theres a lot of, you know, theres a lot of, you know, neuroscience in it, but what i wanted to be able to do was write a book that, you know, somebody like me would be able to read and would want to read. So i think ill end with that, but ill read a little bit, and then we can maybe talk about the book some, and i hope you enjoy it. So im going to realize the beginning to read the beginning, chapter six, its called the backup plan. I dont have any water. Andrew schwartz knew that if he wanted to stay relevant, he needed to sink his penetrating electrodes into the cortex. Darpa could provide that opportunity, but the agency had decided to go with johns hopkins. They have tons and tons of military contracts, so theyre used to dealing with these guys, he said. They have a comfort, so they like to do all these 3d charts which darpa seemed to like. When they announce a product, it also releases a list of potential performers, the agency is willing to fund as part of the project. Any researcher or lab that competes to administer a project can choose from that list, building a team across institutions. For schwartz, that meant working with a project manager and a select group of robotics experts to build an arm before linking it to the brain. There are less than six people in the world that really know how to build a robotic arm, and they all come from mit, said schwartz. All these other yahoos said, oh, we know what were doing. He added that hopkins and dean caymans team spoke with him. Its like im sitting there, so youre going to be my boss, he said . Schwartz was effectively locked out. The. Gone had pentagon had shut the door, but darpa wanted him to keep working with monkeys and awarded him a 2 Million Contract for a study that would not only catapult his research on to 60 minutes and into the pages of the New York Times, but eventually would give him a shot at the human motor cortex. They had people doing the same kind of thing i was doing, a lot more people with a lot more money, and they didnt get anywhere, he said. Other researchers were circling around the problem of how to link the brain to a multijointed prosthetic limb, but few researchers had successfully closed the loop with a robot arm. Loop work had taken place in virtual environment or at a safe distance as with Matthew Nagel who performed a simple pinching action. Mental control of a cur corps would be a boon to quadriplegics, but he wanted a limb you could use to brush your teeth or comb your hair. Schwartz devoted his Research Funds to a suite of experiments, elegant neural control of a dexterous, multijointed limb. I didnt have to report to apl or anybody, i just did my own work. With electrodes in hand, schwartz and his colleagues began to work with two monkeys and a pair of robot arms. Training the Research Monkey falls somewhere between art and science. Since you cant tell a monkey what to do, researchers must devise ingenius ways to familiarize the animals with the physical essence of a task. Its a delicate procedure, and schwartz began by pressing the joy stick forward. The animals learned they could extend their limb to a various fixed point in space, grab a mar b mall low and pull it back on the joystick. A disease the monkey brought the marshmallow back, researchers fixed it in one of four positions for animal to grab. Once the monkeys were familiar with the task, researchers removed the joystick, immobilizing the animals arms by placing them in tubes attached to the task chairs. Meanwhile, they recorded their neural activity while police stationing the arm under placing the arm under, quote, automatic control. One of the great discoveries of the late 20th century happened at the lab of [inaudible] the scientist had implanted electrodes in monkeys hoping to listen in on neurons he believed were associated with hand and mouth movements. The researchers recorded from individual neurons as the monkey reached for a peanut tracing the fire pattern before, during and after the movements. His experiment did not differ tremendously from the neural recordings his fellow researchers were making in other labs. What set his work apart, however, occurred by accident. During a break between tasks, the monkey sat idly in its chair as researchers milled about the room. The monkey wasnt moving, but when one of the researchers snatched a snare peanut, the neuron they had been recording erupted as if the monkey was eating i himself. It was a shocking discovery. It seemed not to distinguish between an action performed and an action observed. Here was a class of neurons involved in motor planning but that was also interested in the physical actions of others. Much has been written about mirror neurons, and brain researchers or at the university of Californialos Angeles have proposed that mirror neuron systems play a Critical Role in recognizing the needs of others. We flinch when we see someone injured on the street, and we feel deep sympathy for the fictional trials of characters in film and theater. Why . Because at some basic level our brain physically recreates the experience as though it were our own. Mirror neurons, these researchers believed, not only are t fundamental mechanism by which we feel empathy, but also play a role in socalled theory of mind, enabling us to recognize that other people have desires that are distinct from our own. The brains penchant to recreate observed actions helps researchers such as schwartz to prepare the monkeys brain for braincomputer interfaces. As the monkey watched the arm grab a piece of food, the motor neurons began firing as though it were grabbing the fruit with its own arm. Meanwhile, they built a decoder, the computer algorithm that associates specific neuralfiring patterns with particular movements. As the researchers continued moving the arm, the algorithmic association patterns grew stronger. Eventually, they began to dial down their control of the arm, blending automatic control with signals from the animals motor cortex. The scientists could still correct its movements. If the arm began to go wildly off course, they had effectively given the monkey training wheels, encouraging it to move the arm in the desired back and forth direction but constricting the movement from side to side. It was a synergy between animal and algorithm. The computer was beginning to better interpret the mode. The resulting paper published in 2008 was a watershed moment for the lab. Cbs and 60 minutes came calling. The study landed on the front page of the New York Times and was subsequently picked up by countless other news organizations. No one had ever shown such scroll. Schwartz had knocked it out of the park. It was a yachtfying moment for schwartz but not a comfortable one for a guy whos more interested in the science than in the demo. I hated it. I could never express what i wanted to express. All i could say is selffeeding, yeah. They can grasp pieces of food and bring it to their mouth, he said. You end up telling the same damn thing over and over. Till schwartz, who was undeniably proud of the work, hed shown proof of principle. Not only could a monkey gain control over an elegant arm, but also use it as a surrogate of its biological counterpart to perform an essential task. It was the underlying science that most excited schwartz. Braincomputer interfaces were pointing to foundational principles, how the brain learns, its relationship to objects, even thought itself. I always laugh when psychologists and cognitive neurosciences who say theyre going to study thinking, i say, can you define that for me . If i were going to poke one of my electrodes in the brain and find a thought, how would i know if i found it, he said . They cant the define it they cant define it. What schwartz had developed was a closed input output system he could use to test the accuracy of his model. We can look at the movement with a performance. You cant do that if you say, oh, thought takes electricity and some chemicals. Wheres your model, he said. But i can a, well, based on my model, my hypothesis, my subject can do this. Ill stop there. [laughter] [applause] so that is, the book has many, there are many different labs, and there are many different researchers who all kind of, you know, circle about each other like, you know, the big dogs that they are. So Andy Schwartz is, he plays a big role in it, and hes really done terrific work. A lot of these guys are doing terrific work. So if you guys have any questions, id be happy to answer them to the best of my ability. Mr. Garrison. Howd you get these people to give you time . You mentioned that so many of them are such big fish and have, you know, so many responsibilities and so much money and other people trying to interview them. How did you get them to give you that time, and was there anyone, any one of those, like, big fish that you couldnt get, that wouldnt give you the time . Persistence, groveling, whiskey. After half no [laughter] no, i mean, it was a lot of per since. I mean, i called these guys again and again and again. And you never get them. You always get, you know, the flunk key, or you get the secretary, or you get someone else. I stalked some of them. I would go to their conferences and, you know, grab them by the lapel be be like, we need to talk, i have these questions for you. You know, at one point, with mr. Schwartz, i drove out to pittsburgh to meet his big research subject, the one that id been promised to see, but darpa was in town. And so when i arrived, they turned me away and said, no, you just have to go home now. And so i did that. So it was a lot of per since. It was a lot of email, skypeing, traveling. Yeah, there were some people that i really wanted to speak with that, you know, some of a lot of these guys, i mean, its interesting, i mean, they, a lot of them have these kind of archetypal personalities, and some of them are kind of the classic scientist. They dont really want to engage with the public. Theyre very interested in their research, you know . One of the researchers whos one of schwartzs counterparts, actually, you know, very early on repeatedly told me he just wouldnt talk to me. At a certain point, i had to respect that. As i was saying, theres this kind of great sifting that happens. And, you know, i at a surgeon point had to say, well, identify got this story and this story and this story, you know . I mean, with eric luther i would have gone much further with him, but there were issues. I mean, he was taking one of his, one of his technologies, he was forming a private company around thats actually doing quite well now. And one of the funders for that company at one point in no Uncertain Terms told me to leave her life, and it was over at that point, you know . And is so i really had to kind of, i had to kind of in some respects, i had to follow the story and go with the story that i had. I mean, eric does so many Different Things that i was able to concentrate on one area but not the other. So, i mean, it was, it was persistence in a lot of ways. Well, i know theres a lot of work being done on prosthetics. I havent read your book, but is there coverage of the, what you might call the more Science Fictiony or cutting edge . Eric alludes to this a lot in his public records. You know, the 2041 project [inaudible] in terms of physical immortality and space travel and all this kind of stuff, the implications of the fundamental problem of hacking the human brain. Does your book deal with any of that kind of stuff . It sort of does. Its always in the mix, in a sense. And a lot of the people like eric im sure youre familiar with miguel and that case you know, theyre future is. And theyre futurists. And theyre as interested in, they are as interested in helping people medically and getting people kind of to normal as they are in putting google in your brain, you know . And having a neurallyimplanted, you know, car or motorcycle or what have you. Theyre very interested in that field. I mean, one thing that miguels work really speaks to on a Science Fiction level is, you know, hes talking about, you know, having this braintobrain interface, you know . And at that point, you know, his Research Really presses up against our notions of biology and our notions of self, you know . So you have this, you know, we have these ideas about what makes a human and, you know, in terms of biological confines of humanity and our own personalities. You know, when miguel starts talking about, you know, linking the brains of multiple humans into a cyborg network, you know, hes very quick to say, you know, what sort of a consciousness emerges from that . What sort of computational model emerges from that . And the truth is we have no idea. And we cant know. And maybe we cant even you said it, because were understand it, because were not smart enough. Maybe there is some other type of consciousness that emerges from, you know, these linked consciouses that at this point we are blood type or deaf to. Eric said in one of his lectures that the google thing is a relative simple project. He said, like, two to four years away. 24 7 access to the internet right there, just by thinking about it. He said two to four years. [laughter] erics an optimist. Eric is an optimist. I mean, hes a professional optimist. And, you know, i mean, what were going to be able to do, i mean, you know, at this moment, and i thought of bringing one of these in, but you can buy off the shelf everything eg, you know . But eeg is always going to be a somewhat limited interface. Eeg is going to have all of these various muscular artifacts, and you know, you dont know that youre necessarily getting neural information. You know . I think that the day when were lining up for outpatient implants, thats a little ways away. So, i mean, yeah, i mean, there are you can play, you can control drones with your brain today. You can control, you know, you can there are, erics lab has created an app for your iphone, you know . So its already out there in a lot of ways. I think where people are really most excited, a lot of people are interested in the Science Fiction part of it. Is it challenging to. [inaudible] [laughter] no. It was a steep learning curve. I was reading nature articles, science articles. To not only understand the signs but to understand the science to the point where you can actually explain it in a dramatic, interesting way. Not necessarily dramatic, that you can understand it in simple terms and explain it in simple terms were people can understand it. You learn to read the articles, and also its interesting because when you first start there is so much hyperbole in the science about dci. These studies come out and a lot of people in the press they say while look what they did, but they dont actually know how to read the study. You read this read the study its claims and its methodologies are much more modern than it might appear at first glance. So you start to really understand the limitations of what these people are doing as well. It was a steep learning curve on that for sure. In the back. With some of your research what did you find challenging . It is when you go into the monkey lab you see, it can be challenging to see the animal. A lot of them are working on animal models. I wasnt as concerned with that as i thought i would be. Most of these animals, granted they are research animals. But in that realm, they are well care forward, groomed, i did not spend a lot of time, cage time with them but it is a big question and people get very worried about it. Its a legitimate debate. To this day, why they do not publish the address of their Animal Research house. That is challenging to me. The other thing that is challenging working with one person in particular who really did believe that these technologies would help him. And did not have, he did not think that this necessarily would help him immediately, but he was doing it with the expectation that somewhere down the road he would be first in line. That was challenging because im certain the researchers have many long conversations with him trying to temper his expectation as much as possible. Yet, it didnt completely sink in. So there is a certain kind of share dilution that goes on that is not entirely comfortable. The the other thing im not entirely comfortable with is the patent. At one point eric in the book says, everything between the rain in the brain and the skull, thats me. There is another man in the book has a patent on all of these. When you start getting into questions of privatizing these technologies in the brain in that way, it becomes a question. Im not saying it should not happen that way but i am saying that it becomes a question. [inaudible] off the record no. There have not been any lawsuits between there have been one between two top research that had to do with the formation of cyber kinetics. It was a group or company that was trying to privatize and create what they called, bring gauge. One of the researchers felt that all of this had been in the public realm and that they moved to patent it and to form this company. He threatened to sue but never did. You talk about the patients, a similar talk about patients expect more than they are going to get out of this process. I would say that was one person. As i got the idea that people did that for companies. I think they do. Thats the other flipside to this. Particularly sherman and another person in the book, but jan particular, she was raised catholic and the idea of service and just helping others was instilled in her from a very young age. Her big cause was hunger and she would work and soup kitchens, she would would donate can goods and all of the stuff. She suffers a very rare disease that is very slow neurons and she became paralyzed over the course of several years. She became despondent. Part of that she felt she was a burden on others. She was a burden to her family, she couldnt help anyone anymore, even if she wanted to volunteer she would have to have someone help her volunteer. She would be an imposition on anyone. She she became suicidal at a certain point. This research, she is very clear, that this research was not going to help her, but the very idea that this was going to help future generations of disabled has given her such spiritual solace and has reignited. It has given her renewed meaning and spiritual dimension to her life that for a long time she felt that god had abandoned her. In that respect, i dont know if that is quantifiable, but it is a real benefit. She was meaningful life. Have you thought if theres politics involved especially in the more practical dimensions been able to hook up your brain to help paraplegics, and people coming back from combat . Is there more more money for that now . So i think there are a few things. Yes. There is more money for it. One is jeffrey link who is the driving force, he he is a real force of nature. Hes in the book. He is the one who spearheaded the revolution of the press that aches program. He was in the army for a long time and then was recruited. He served two tours in iraq. He came back saw several people with amputations, some of them were from leftover mines from russia, some some of them were from combat. He came back and really felt and he really felt like he was duty bound to make these kids whole again. One of the problems with upper living species is lower limits is largely solvable. As people have amputations have them for some sort of vascular disease. The leg is not a simple prostatic but it is much easier engineering challenge to craft a prostatic leg and an arm. Because an arm moves differently and it hangs, it has various challenges. The market share for upper arm prostheses is almost nonexistent because theres so many people who have amputated legs, when someone is looking at r and d to create an upper limb press thesis look at the population of people who would benefit this, they say we will not be able to get a reasonable return on our investment. Thats where dark or really stepped in. In that respect politics broadly spoken really did inform this. As well, obama in 2013, there is a lot more money for brain machine then there has been in a long time. Have they decided how they are going to regulate it yet . [inaudible] right now so with luthers company for example, many implants function with the brain and go into the brain itself. That is an intense regulatory process to get the fda to approve that process. Where eric was able to sidestep was by using a type of implant that does not actually pierced the brain, sits on top of the brain. It is part of a twostep epilepsy surgery procedure. So they do the craniotomy, place the electrode on the brain and the way for the person to have a seizure to localize it. During that time he creates so he hasnt had to deal with that sort of Regulatory Framework in that regard. Going forward, if this were to be, privatize an actual commercial device which he has every intention to do, i think that would then become at this point hes working with eeg. If he were to try to get into actual brain implant there be a lot more regulatory hurdles to jump the four he got there. At this point, hes done a few studies with it very few in plants have made that leap. Theres one called neural pace, its kinda like the deeper stimulation it delivers a small bolt of electricity and then theres deep brain stimulation as well which are forms of brain machine, that would have to pass fda approval like anything else. That would be a challenge. Any other questions . Who is funding all of this . A lot is being funded by the military, by the department of defense. The National ScienceFoundation Funds quite a bit, the federal government, but a a lot funded by the military. I think in past reiterations in their statement said that they want to effectively build better, stronger, faster soldiers. That has fallen by the wayside with dci particularly. At this point theyre interested in the basic science of getting the motor system up and running. There have been programs in the past where they tried to link Fighter Pilots to the cockpits. And use that with prolonged sleep deprivation deprivation. There have been been these big scary big brother questions. These days, at least with the revolution its about getting back to normal is unlikely that insurance company. [inaudible] i dont know. I cannot really answer, i do not know if obama can recover, but may be. Did your Research Stay within the United States . So theres that continental divide. And atlantic divide. Most of the people working that is accessing the brain directly or in the United States. In europe it is much more easier. I i spoke with people in england, a kind of stayed away, didnt talk to too many europeans are people based in europe. Several your appearance are working here the United States. Including phil kennedy who made news recently. This is one of these things were i wish the book were coming out a little later. He went to belize and had surgery done upon himself to implant electrodes in his own brain so he could study himself. So it really takes all kinds. Thinking about stronger powers abroad . There is a lot of interest in germany, and england, france, those three countries have a fairly robust lab. The italian labs were huge. Really foundational things, the entire group of researchers that came and created that are uncovered this idea. [inaudible] by the book. [laughter] thats a great question, when i was talking about how i was thinking of writing the book, one reason why i really didnt want to kinda catalog everything , is every two weeks there is a huge advance. I really tried to concentrate on underlying science, the core technology, the court dropped. In terms of incremental advancement, they are happening every day. In terms of the broader arc of the story, the reason i rotate the way i did, the, the reason i concentrated so closely on the motor system is because it had legs. , thats a terrible pun. If there are no other questions, thank you all. [applause]. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] book tv is on instagram, follow us for publishing news, schedule update and behind disc scenes picture and videos. Instagram. Com book underscore tv. Patrick is a pulitzer prizewinning journalist, he was a Wire Service Reporter during the Kennedy Administration. The politics of decision on tran deception, what was the Kennedy Administration like during its last year . Guest it was all about politics, getting ready for reelection. He had three major issues to deal with, one was the cuban missile crisis. He was concerned that curtis labbe would tell the truth about the cuban missile crisis. When my book is based on his 289 hours of secret tape recordings kennedy himself made. They were hidden for 34 years. I listen to all of them along with 16 hours of telephone calls. What you can hear those tape recordings is that they offered a solution to kennedy to the cuban missile crisis. Game is without a turkey and all get them out of cuba, kennedy, kennedys a great idea, ill do it. He accepted it within minutes. That is what the book tells you that you will not read elsewhere. Also on civil rights, kennedy was very much a post to luther king. He was very much opposed to the civil rights movement. One reason is he got 85 electoral votes from the south in 1960, it if he did not get them Richard Nixon would have been president. I must say Lyndon Johnson as Vice President told him, he said said he will not get those whats the next time. You have to give the moral support of the civil rights. So kicking and screaming he did support civil rights. Course and ended up with johnson. On vietnam youll see kennedy being deeply involved in what was the overthrow of the president of south vietnam. Likely overthrow, also the assassination. He knew but at the last minute he refused to take steps to save his life. These are are all in the tape recording. It is an eyeopener in the book. It tells you things you thought you knew. Things i thought i knew about kennedy. I covered all all of these topics in 1963. It isnt until now, 50 years later after listening to these tapes that i found out what really happened. Host how did you get access to the tapes . Spee2 i knew there available at the Kennedy Library but they are very hard to listen to. It was lowtech in 1963. You spent hours, eight hours to get one hour of tape. It was that hard. Many headaches listening to these things. The telephone recordings are very good, very clear, but the Kennedy Library held back on the stuff those most controversial. His involvement overthrow in the new zealand. You remember he emulated himself on the streets of vietnam. That picture change kennedy. Change the whole situation in vietnam. It was just a matter of time before kennedy got rid of him. Host from what you gather on the tape and where the Kennedy Administration was going on at second term, what you think it wouldve look like . Guest like mansfield who is a Senate Democratic leader, i dealt with him quite a bit, he is sure to to me that kennedy would withdraw from vietnam. But Bobby Kennedy also a senator, assured me kennedy would never pull out of vietnam. According to mike, kennedy told him at one point, i cant do it now in 63, i have to get reelected in 1964. After that, then i will withdraw. Withdraw. I will have a phase withdraw. But once he overthrew the president of vietnam, that government collapse was weak. The vietnamese military collapse. So it ended up kennedy was killed 20 days after xeon was killed. So Lyndon Johnson gets handed the totally collapsed government and army of south vietnam. Eventually he made his own decision about not sending in American Contract groups. Johnson went to his grave arguing that kennedy overthrow the assassination of the, johnson was a big supporter of the end. It was the reason he ended up committing combat troops. Host is the author of the new books politics of deception, jfk secret decision of vietnam. Thank you so much. Patterson and steve israel, democrat of new york is also an author, a lot of authors from capil hill. Yours is a little different, why is that. Mine is a novel. Every member of congress believes they are going to write the next great memoir. I just make a different a different direction and wrote a parody of washington d. C. Politics and some of the people i know here. Who is morris . Morris is in innocent guy living on long island, he does like the news, he likes he likes the new york mets and classic movies. The National Security agency, through through a glitch suspect him of being a terrorist. The entire surveillance operation of the federal government is watching every move he makes, disrupting his life. Life. The story of an innocent person who gets caught up on the war and terror. Does mr. Moore survived the federal government in the end . Morris exit goes through some tough times, i will not give away the ending of the book. I am happy to say that rob reiner has decided to make the book a television show. We are are working on that right now. Are you taking your own personal experience as being a congressman and what you have observed . A putting that in the book . I would sit in classified briefings with president bush, Vice President cheney and here is the most observed dialogue which i know would always make a good book. This is really based on my own experiences, watching the federal government, with the war on terror, trying to balance civil rights with National Security. I did not want to write a scholarly book about that because it oneself so i wrote a parody about it. Congressman, now that the recent events in paris and what has happened there, but the cia director has said about perhaps we do need to loosen and have more surveillance, what are your thoughts . We have been having the debate between protecting our National Security when attacks happen and protecting our Civil Liberties since the 18th century. This is been a National Debate throughout the entire course of our nation. What happened in paris today continues to raise the issues, we are going to grapple with those issues, thats what this book is about. Taking people behind the scene but in a satirical way i want to develop those themes and comments on the balance between National Security and civil rights. Congressman steve israel, democrat of new york. The. The global war on morris is the name of the novel. We want to hear from you, post your feedback to your facebook wall, facebook. Com book tv. Tonight we are here to welcome william who is a scholar, author, panelists, journalists, he focuses on National Security issue and has been doing so for over 40 years. His expertise has